


A handful of dust

by superkawaiifreak



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderqueer, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-20 22:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 51
Words: 66,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14903288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superkawaiifreak/pseuds/superkawaiifreak
Summary: A story a day until KH3's release date. Genres from drama to suspense, horror to slice-of-life. Akuroku, Soriku, Terraqua, Xion/Kairi/Namine. Read at your own discretion.





	1. An empty cell

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of there finally being a real, beating release date for Kingdom Hearts III, I am writing a story a day. Some days may have accompanying work, such as a duo-story, a companion piece, original music, or artwork, but minimally, there will be a story. I will cite my work, because let’s face it -- I will definitely need my inspiration to be whetted by others if I’m actually going to tackle a 232-day-long project.
> 
> Warning for mature themes, dark at times, cussing, drugs, sex, hidden violences, etc. Couples will center around Soriku and Akuroku because old habits die hard, but I will write about others.
> 
> Thank you for reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: sexual violence.

An empty cell

* * *

 

The execution had been scheduled for dusk the next day, she had heard from the hallway just moments before. Aqua sighed into her iron shackles. Dreams of oranges, rolled oats sitting in honey, salted cheeses with warm bread -- she salivated instantly. She wondered, briefly always briefly, what foods would avail themselves to her in the approaching hours. Soiled men, she grimaced, _thinking_ of them: their sweated-over penises gliding across her tongue, their calloused hands on her face as they fucked her mouth, her lips painted by the white of their semen. The first time, she had thought it would be the only time. They all did, she heard.

It had been nine hundred and fourteen days since she had been apprehended by the Twilight Marshalls. No one, not even the wind, could have foreseen her untimely capture. She had been on the run for years; it had been nearly a decade since the Enchanted Dominion first placed a bounty on her sweet, delicate little head.

_Tall, blue-haired Keyblade wielder_

_Goes by the name AQUA_

_Wanted for murder of two former heads of ORG XIII_

_8,000,000_

Aqua scowled again. Gray snow floated outside, she saw, to complement the black snow resting on the stones below. Since the Seven Lights Movement, the days on Twilight Town, The World That Never Was, and Radiant Garden passed with snow. Ashy skies were dusted with even more charcoal dusts from the winds, tunneling deep from the upper atmosphere. She remembered when it happened, too. It was her, Terra, and Leon, all standing along the perimeter of Radiant Garden’s castle town, when the president had unleashed lethal force on its citizens, on the rest of the worlds’ inhabitants. Searing lasers melted a brown-haired girl just a foot away from Aqua. The brightness of the girl’s eyes dulled, slowly, and then the light left in an instant -- the musculature of the neck suddenly fails, the head topples forward, and your skin loses all hydration.

At that moment, the start of the Seven Lights Movement, Aqua had pierced the Secretary of State’s heart with a rod of ice. The Secretary, Sir Xaldin, had bled gratuitously.

Murderer. Aqua remembered that split-second, psychological referendum with ease. Not daring to tell neither Leon nor Terra, she had cherished the electricity that came with killing Xaldin. She approached his dying body. That was the first head of Organization XIII. His life, she had learned, was worth 4,000,000.

Radiant Garden’s unprecedented move to state-sanctioned violence inspired other governments to follow. After the Radiant Garden Daily had adequately sliced and pasted Aqua’s attractively innocent face to the 24-inch spreads of every corner in the city, the Enchanted Dominion, perceiving the shift in valuation, slapped a bounty on her. It had started low, only at 500,000. Angered by the belittling of her work in the Movement, though, Aqua had traveled to the Dominion to demand the removal of her bounty. Tears streaming down her angelic face, the blues of her eyes sending involuntary jolts to the pubic bone of Queen Aurora herself, Aqua had been thrown into the dungeon for a night. In those incipient days -- the days where no one knew, exactly, what the intergalactic uprising had truly meant, if anything; where knowledge of Radiant Garden’s torture was yet unknown; where Sora had still been living and not publicly eviscerated by Sephiroth, himself, that dog -- revolution still tasted sexy. It left the mouth with an urgent flair, a type of otherworldly selflessness finding comfort in the physicality of uprising, itself. The Queen tiptoed into the dungeon that night, a faint candle in her right hand. Aqua, still cavalier, sultry and smug with her knee-high boots, defined biceps, her status as _Keyblade Master_ known across the lands, had been waiting.

Aqua pulled Aurora’s thighs closer to her face, willing her pussy to rub against her mouth. Her tongue worked Aurora’s clit in tiny circles, and for years, this was the trajectory of Aqua’s life as an outlaw. Her peppered visits from world to world began with a bargain and ended with her reaching an orgasm through usually rough, physically desperate, aching sex. Without a doubt, the night with Aurora occupied a particular space in her mind. Likely valuing Aurora’s status as queen, as one would, added to the moment of the event. Aqua shuddered in her stone-lined cell.

“For you, _Master_ Aqua.” A tin tray was left just out of her reach from the cell. She frowned, looking up at the guard.

“Can you scoot it closer?”

“Sure,” he bent down to pick up the tray. “Sure, sure, I can.” He walked to Aqua all but two steps before slapping that fucking metal band onto her wrist, that _fucking band_ \-- “I heard that they started allowing you to use your magic again. Some special privilege before turning your lights off, I think.”

In the course of three seconds, her energy had been enervated, and she went limp. Her knees and shins slammed roughly into the floor, her single arm still held up by the guard. She shook with anger, knowing the familiar sound of a guard unlocking her cell so he could walk in, slap her, fuck her, sedate her, and leave.

There was this one man, she remembered, at Olympus Coliseum who had a profound effect on her. He had sweet eyes and soft, long black hair; he asked to take her on a proper date. (“You want to go on a date with me?” He laughed. “Yes! The sky is falling, the sky is falling, I get it. So come out with me.” Aqua rolled her eyes. “Just this one time.”) Their night had been slow and warm, so humid and intimate. The shimmering lake reflected the stars brightly that night, and she and, what was his name? Zack, she remembered; she and Zack had danced slowly as she cast beautiful spells around the two of them. He stood in awe of the remarkable ability to conjure wind, snow, bright fire, graviga. Aqua remembers his lips, most of all, and his soft kissing as they had sex in his bed, the cleanest bed in all of Olympus, he said once. She missed his blind optimism and his faith in things unseen. Sometimes, she forgot the texture of his hands, and she would turn to the other side of the bed and try to remember it. Sometimes, she can still see his pantry, filled with cheeses and baguettes and grains and honeycombs.


	2. Folking around

Folking around

* * *

The smell of barbecue diffused overhead in the warm night air. Still sweaty, her body covered in the spray of the ocean, Aqua brought a cold beer to her lips, taking one large gulp. In one hand, a PBR, in the other, a liter of Dr. Pepper. She impatiently tapped her foot against the gravel of her driveway. Where was he?

Earlier in the day, Terra gave her a call. Mid-sentence, she glanced at her phone and nearly jumped from her chair. Her aunt cocked her head curiously -- “Who’s _that_ , dear?” For months, she and _Terra_ had been texting. The usual exchange of asking for notes, advice on good movies, the best smoke spots, even a few good mornings, had occurred between them. She didn’t even know how it began, them _talking_. On this afternoon, however, during the weekly Slate Sunday family brunch, Terra changed the game quite drastically by calling her. This meant that his interest was held. And this meant she would have to make a choice: should it continue?

“Aqua, hey,” Terra said casually before she greeted him. Her phone felt like ice.

“H-hi, Terra,” Aqua said, nervous. “What’s up?”

“Well, you know. I’m in the neighborhood,” he ventured. He paused. “Actually, do you want to hang out tonight? I can come pick you up.”

Shocked, pleased, though mostly surprised, she couldn’t come up with a response. Terra had asked her out?

“Aqua?”

“Y-yes, sorry,” she exhaled. “Yes, please come by tonight. Say 8?”

“Perfect. See you then.”

In the course of ten seconds, she and Terra had gone from sort-of-interested to definitely interested. That had been two hours ago, when the sun was still out. She wondered, after getting off the phone with him, if it really was a good decision to go out with him on a school night. Graduation was only weeks away, she thought. At what point did she give herself a break?

Two bright lights suddenly pierced her vision, and within moments, Terra had pulled up in a black Mustang. He coolly stepped out of the car, smiling in his subtle way.

“Hey,” he said. “Looks like you’re bringing the party?” He motioned to her beer. “Not a huge fan of PBR. I have some Coors in the back, though. Here,” he reached for the Dr. Pepper. “Are you really chasing beer?”

“I like what I like,” she shrugged. “Plus, beer breath is disgusting.”

“Beer breath?” He grinned. “I’m not sure that I know what you mean.” He laughed. “Here, have one.” He tossed her a Coors.

Aqua grinned at him. Her gaze lingered on his chest, his arms, then walked to the passenger side.

“So, I’m thinking we can go to the starry hill?” He turned to face her, the trees whirring past them. The street lights flickered on his face.

“Sure.” She stared at him. “I love it there.”

They rode in silence, mostly. Terra offered to turn on the radio, but Aqua declined. From his periphery, he noticed the feminine minutiae of her body. Her buoyant hair, the light it gave off; her rose-colored lips; the light tinkle of her laugh. It had taken him ages to, alas, ask Aqua for her phone number. Since freshman year, when they had met on the track team, he carried a small, though concentrated, liking for her. Beautiful Aqua. Reliable Aqua. Kind. Funny. Now, senior year, and three years had passed, and he still had never even hugged her. He still hadn’t told her how she had helped him immensely in their sophomore year, or that he thought about her and her family’s brunches all the time -- the Slate family brunches were legendary at their high school --  or that he might like her as more than a friend.

Slowly, he rolled to the foot of the hill, killing the lights.

“This is it,” Terra whispered. “We should be fine tonight, I didn’t see any cops. But let me go first to make sure, okay?” He turned to face her. She nodded with her signature, pointed smile; and it was then, (how was she so magnetic?), of all the damn moments, that Terra decided to stop time. Hand on the door handle, he snaked it back and touched her face, delicately, the strong warmth of intimacy pounding in his chest.

“Aqua,” Terra started. His eyes darted back and forth, trying to read her face.

She was caught off guard, and still couldn’t quite believe that it was truly Terra sitting next to her, Terra’s hand on her face and the other on her thigh; but she chose to embrace the uncertainty, as one does, and instead focused on his shining teeth, the scent of cedarwood on his clothes, and brought her lips to his. Stubble jutted into her chin, just slightly, and his lips were soft, so soft, and his hands gentle with her, and from the floor of her pelvis, she felt lightning shoot up to her chest, a powerful giddiness enveloping her body.

The beer sat, forgotten, in the night.


	3. Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a few days behind, but for good reason. Will publish two more stories by the end of the day. Warnings: death.

Ghosts

* * *

 

You were killed on February 21, 2014.

We had a funeral for you, the entire town did. My memory eludes me. I think we said some things about you, one of those hopeless, pathetic ditties that people vomit in times of severe mourning. The congregation deferred to you, your entire life; but how is it, that even well-meaning, kind people can forget the authenticity of your mind? You are more than someone’s trite, emphatic garbage. You are not a one-liner. You cannot be compared to the ocean, the sky, or mountains -- you’re not fucking stardust, you’re dead, you’re fucking dead, and your heart no longer beats. You are not.

“I picked up your bill.”

I tasted nothing but the aftermath of corn syrup on my tongue. “What?”

His eyes darted to the floor, then to me, then back to the floor. “You didn’t say much, and I felt bad about you wasting your time.” He bit his lip. “Listen, I’m not really sure how to even do this, so this one’s on me, and I’ll be gone.” 

He faltered. I knew that my face looked ridiculous, my eyes like saucers, and there was nothing keeping me to the Earth.

“I didn’t hear anything you said,” I said. 

“Well, that’s a confession if I’ve ever heard one.” 

We both sat in silence for a moment. 

“Listen, I don’t know what to say. All I can really say is that I’m sorry,” he spoke lowly, as if speaking too loud would somehow reveal him to the rest of the restaurant. “I didn’t cut him off in time. I came on shift and didn’t realize that he had been drinking the entire day. I thought he was just a partier. We have a lot of that type,” he gave me a knowing look. “A lot of partiers…”

“It’s not your fault.” 

“Okay.” He answered quickly, as if urged by the unseen tick of a clock. “Then should I leave?” I almost wanted a threat. I wanted some indication of disorderly conduct. I wanted this exchange to become violent, for me to feel nothing but hatred in my body, for him to speak and shout defensively. This all passed in a flicker, like a candle. I sighed. There was so much to destroy.

“I think more slowly these days,” I said. He recognized it -- the burning hatred vibrating beneath my perfect white face. My hideous face. He saw what flooded my skull, and maybe it was this nonchalance in observing so deeply the radiance obscured by my boiling anger that made him, the eloquent and sexy bartender at Acme & Company, the perfect human to gaze at while slurping down whiskey gingers, gin and tonics, smoky shots of mezcal. 

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said in a voice suggestive of an idea, but was masked behind the firmness of his voice. A demand. I saw and accepted it. Once outdoors, we walked toward the parking lot. 

“Why did you want to meet in the first place?” I asked. 

He slowed in step. Then his gaze fogged over, and I recognized in him the mental flash of remembering traumatic events. “I saw you at her funeral. I saw you almost walk to the podium, to give a speech I’d imagine, and then sit back down. I saw that you weren’t wearing black, that you’re shaking inside. And I,” his voice rose a pitch, “I just couldn’t get his face out of my head. Whatever his fucking name was, that idiot’s jarring blue hair, who could forget it?”

And he told me. He told me that the blue-haired man, sinking in his stool under the dim amber lights of Acme & Company, downed drink after drink; how stupid it was, to feed him shots, who cared that he had been there over five hours, don’t people metabolize alcohol more quickly than that? Evidently not. Evidently fucking not. 

“I’m the bartender who enabled him. I was the one who was too fucking busy to keep track of his bill. I was the one who didn’t kick him out, who didn’t call the police. Motherfucker went  _ driving  _ after the last call for drinks, and I didn’t stop him. I’m responsible for her death. Xion,” he could barely say her name. “Xion… I’m so sorry.” He wiped tears from his eyes. His mouth scrunched up unattractively, spittle gathered at his lips, and his head hung, shamefully, I would think.

“It’s not your fault. We can’t blame other people for one person’s actions. Xion’s parents aren’t pressing charges against  _ you _ ,” I spat out, pissed off. “They’re pressing charges against  _ him.  _ He made the choice to drink and drive. Not you.” I leaned up against what I thought was his car. “I know you don’t believe me. But believe in me believing you. This isn’t your doing.”

He smiled sadly at me. I had a passing thought, that it was so pathetically human of him, to cry over some unrelated person, that he might just indicate that true altruism might exist. I felt like I’d known him for ages. That he knew the feelings inside of me: my irreconcilable rage burned deeply, that my hands could anticipate the weight of a knife, anticipate the particular give of a human body. 

“I feel it. I feel everything. My friend since fourth grade is dead, and you think you’re responsible for it. Well,” I looked away. “You’re not. You just have to know now -- she is your person. She’s the one that will make you think about how you go about treating others. She’s the one that will make you say ‘I love you’ to your mom before you hang up the phone. She’s the one who will make you try a little harder to be better.”

Axel -- the bartender, the annoying crybaby, the one not responsible for Xion’s death -- hugged me tight, like he’d never let me go. 

I don’t know where her spirit is, but I wonder about serendipity, coincidences, and atoms. I wonder if it’s real, that death transcends life itself; not for its cyclical nature, but for its excruciating and necessary gravity, its direct confrontation with the self, like a silver mirror, to lead you to ask: do I dare? Do I dare to go on without you, to disturb the remainder of the universe that you no longer can?

Axel didn’t let me go for fourteen whole minutes. His tears ruined my shirt. He is an easy crier and an excellent cook. He plays classical piano, and he prays for you every damn day.

I believe in ghosts. I feel you everywhere.


	4. Collateral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more to go.
> 
> Warnings: sexual violence.

Collateral

* * *

 

What Namine and Kairi never talked about was the rural road that led straight to the Mulaney’s farmhouse. In passing, they might mention it -- that it was so dilapidated, would catch fire in an instant, and probably housed King Cobras or Boa Constrictors -- but their mouths snapped shut the moment their F150 hit the paved section of the road. It often took a few breaths for the dust, left in their wake, to clear from the rear mirror; but by that time, they had already forgotten about the cesspool that was the Mulaney’s farmhouse.

Namine, above all else, remembered what had happened there.

It had started off lightly, as these things typically do. With the steady decline in elevation from Kairi’s house straight down to the farmhouse, the unpaved street made for an excellent raceway. The kids on the street rode their bikes down it constantly -- all of them. Summers were spent beating each other’s time from K’s driveway to the farmhouse. Sora, in trying to beat the record of 36 seconds, once bailed right into the Oleander bushes on the perimeter of the farm. His face was covered in splotchy bruises, a few pink and white flowers entangled in his hair, as if the hand of God had smashed his body into the foliage -- punishment, one could say, for disturbing the Mulaneys.

As the days grew longer, the sun’s heat climbing into the sky and slicing into their eyes with powerful, white rays, they grew bolder. The Mulaneys had never, ever caught them. To be sure, they had not ever vandalized their property, nor had they even come close to it; however, they committed small, treacherous crimes in the ways teenagers do. Kairi used to snip off their creamy, egg-colored roses as decoration for her room; Namine often took extra wooden slats, forgotten and dusty and fragile, for painting; Sora, the worst of all, would ring their doorbell and dart off, in the dead of the night. 

Sora had just skidded to a halt, outside of the farmhouse. A long tail of dust floated up in his eyes, Kairi’s, Namine’s, and Larxene’s. Larxene had moved to their town just a few weeks before, and she was one of the few teenagers whose parents couldn’t afford to buy them a used car, and as money will bond those with it, it bonded those without it, and the four of them had become quick friends after they taught each other their secrets of poverty. Sora proudly showed off his invention: custom honeycomb cereal, consisting of smashed Saltines, water, honey, and white sugar dusted on top. 

“You okay?” Sora asked to the rest of them.

“I’m good,” Kairi said. Namine and Larxene nodded. Kairi narrowed her eyes at Sora, suspicious.

“Ah. You are observant, young grasshopper,” Sora smiled. He pulled a pouch out of his pocket. “I found these in my brother’s room. They’re edibles. Here,” he began parceling them out with his too-sharp fingernails, the grime from his hands latching onto the gummies.

“Wait, like, weed edibles?” Larxene asked. Namine gave her a quick look. Larxene’s face lit up embarrassedly. 

“Yeah. Just take it, you’ll be fine,” Sora dropped it in her hand. The moisture in the air swelled.

Their bikes were left, abandoned, in front of the Mulaney’s farmhouse. The four of them had sprawled out in the adjacent field, enjoying the delightful buzz of the THC coursing throughout their system, basking in the sun. It was this time, they would all realize, at different points in their lives, that they felt closest to one another; that, soon, they would disperse and go to college, go to trade school, move off the island, and only have the non-physicality of memory to remind them that their friendships had even existed. 

There was a sudden gasping in the distance, a wet-chuffing breath, a  _ panting _ , and Sora jumped to his feet with quick alacrity. 

“The fuck is that?” He exclaimed, his eyes wild and red. “Does anyone see a dog? An animal?” He searched and scanned the field. 

“Do the Mulaneys have dogs?” Kairi asked. The sound wouldn’t stop.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Sora said. He ushered everyone to their feet. “Let’s fucking go.”

They clambered to their bikes, the heavy breathing of something pounding in their eyes, their nostrils, their mouths, their chests; pounding, pounding, because what the fuck was that, where was it, and when would it leave?

“Are you sure w-w-we’re not just all high?” Larxene slurred. Her eyes were the worst of them all. Whites were hazy shades of red, her pupils as large as the moon, fingers shaking ever so slightly. 

“No, dumbass,” Kairi spat, “we all heard it. There was something there.”

Namine nodded, her mouth a hard line. Sora shook his head.

“Let’s all meet at my place. We can hose off in my backyard.” 

Knowledge of the Mulaneys was quite limited in those days. One had seen them shoveling hay once at an uncharacteristic 12pm. Usually, the work of the farm was carried out at dawn to avoid the harshness of the sun. Kairi swears that she saw some exotic reptile being toted out by the awkward brother, the one with the long and pale hair, to his car. Or it could have been an instrument, maybe a bassoon. She didn’t know.

* * *

 

When they had all learned what had happened, their tiny, practically invisible town had been inflated and thrown up by Destiny Island’s Chronicle. The FBI had been called in, and forensic pathologists kept their neon-yellow tape up for weeks. By this time, Larxene’s family had moved away, no longer concerned with the case. 

Kairi, her head on Sora’s stomach, reached up to touch his hand. He smiled weakly and returned her touch. 

“Kairi,” he uttered, “how could we have known?” His voice broke.

She didn’t know. “I don’t know,” she got up from lying down, wrapped her long legs around his torso to face him. “I don’t fucking know,” she started to cry again. Sora cried too, and he slowly worked his hands down her body, delicately, always delicately; she pushed against his pelvis, needed to feel something other than this pain, this guilt; Sora’s pants weren’t even pushed to his knees before she had sunk onto him, her hips methodic, her entire body undulating into his. How could they have known? She didn’t know, fuck, she didn’t fucking know, so she just cried and climaxed because she didn’t  _ know _ what Larxene had went through.

(Why was it that Kairi was privileged a caress that asked for permission, when Larxene, on that day, biked back to the Mulaney’s farmhouse, adequately stoned, to find out what that sound was, and was instead ambushed by a tall and faceless entity? Why was it that Kairi had never been slapped --  _ come here  _  -- had never been bruised --  _ you’re hurting me  _ \-- had never been disciplined disciplined  _ disciplined  _ by someone else’s body?)

He came out of the side door of the farmhouse. Larxene, her entire body shaking from too much weed, shaking from fright, whipped around when she heard footsteps rush from behind. In her horror, she realized that the panting, the wet-chuffing breaths, were from  _ him _ , and that that was exactly what he sounded like when he was siphoning off her breath; the hot breathiness, it was in front of her, then it was below her, then it was in all of the haystacks around her, then it was nowhere, nowhere at all, and she doesn’t remember a thing. 


	5. Portugal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, I’m trying really hard to stay away from all of this violent content, but Gothic writing makes the most sense to me, and it is usually the most honest. Life does have bliss, however, so I’m going to challenge myself to write about it.

Portugal

* * *

 

So you see yourself from the shaky hand of a camcorder from 2003; you’re eight years old, and you’re on a spongy noodle in the swimming pool, and your mom brings you a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone -- “Pool ice cream is the best kind of ice cream,” she says lovingly -- and it’s peculiar, you think, feeling the jolt of self-consciousness make its way down your spine. You’re twenty-four now, college is just a few years behind you, and you’re haunted by fleeting thoughts that you may never recreate the jubilance, the sense of togetherness and wonder, that your undergraduate years gave you. You sigh. You apply for jobs in bustling, up-and-coming,  _ Millennial _ -laden cities; then when you land one, miraculously, you move in a haste, and dread, the entire time, about how little sleep you will get for the next three years. Because in the post-graduate life, it’s all about the  _ hustle _ , baby, and if you sink too soon, you will never be one of the  _ stars _ \-- if you sink too early, you can say goodbye to the Forbes 30 Under 30, LinkedIn TopVoices, the Rhodes Scholarship, graduate school funding, love. Roxas tightened his mouth, watching the shaky video.  _ I want another cone! _

It started at the gym -- a serendipitous spin class. Who in their right mind would waste 60 precious minutes being instructed by some over-energized soccer mom type? Well, Axel did, and so did Roxas. Roxas, who hadn’t been sleeping well, whose daytime anxieties followed him to bed, accidentally stepped on Axel’s heel on the way out of the class, and Axel decided to have a response.

“That was a bit rude,” he said, eyes on Roxas.

“Oh, um, sorry,” Roxas replied, embarrassed. “Didn’t mean to…”

Axel, his eyes aflame, laughed. “Take it easy, I was joking,” he slowed his pace. “The name’s Axel.” Axel stuck his hand out, beads of sweat still clinging to his forearms. 

“Roxas.” He gave Axel an intentional gaze, a conscious smile, and asked him if he had any plans for lunch. 

And he doesn’t know, even now, what prompted him to take a risk on Axel. The previous night, he had only slept for three hours, and he had only eaten an egg scramble that morning. Perhaps it was the soft blow left by the home video he had watched the night prior, but nevertheless, something stuck with him. He didn’t want to sink. He wanted to take control of his life again; why did accomplishments have expirations? He craved that optimism, that radiant positivity, of an idealistic college student, discovering communal living spaces for the first time.  _ We all clean the dishes here. _

Months had gone by without notice. He and Axel saw it each other weekly, probably three times on average; Axel was two years older than him, a savant, an atrociously refined force of nature who worked in the corporate offices of REI. Axel earned his B. A. from USC, Roxas from Brown. Roxas liked Axel a lot. He was intriguing, a unique caricature of the things you wished you could be when you were twelve -- he had the allure of a Sherlock Holmes detective. A sleuth, your local expert in the best cuisines available at midnight, the person who knew someone who knew someone else. Seemed to know everything about everything, and the gaps in his knowledge were hilarious: Axel had no idea that the moon, itself, didn’t rotate, that you didn’t  _ have  _ to wait three days before calling someone, and that spin classes were the best form of non-impact cardio. 

It was the October after they began dating, about eleven months into their relationship, when Roxas told Axel that he would have to move back to the East Coast in February.

“I’ve been offered an incredible research position at MIT, Axel, and I just can’t turn it down. This could revolutionize my career,” Roxas’ eyes lit up, though he understood what this would mean. 

“Wow,” Axel said, “I had no idea you were considering that in the first place.” 

Roxas tensed. Would this be how it ended -- in a sort of egocentric, me-focused argument? This wasn’t what he wanted. They sat in the calm glow of Axel’s backyard, having just finished eating Chinese soup dumplings, lo mein, and snow peas. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of you. I’m so proud. MIT?” He laughed, shaking his head. “That’s absolutely insane. You’re insane. I can’t believe I know someone who’s actually going to to be working on neurogenesis at fucking MIT. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t sad.” He closed his eyes. 

Roxas looked away. “Axel…”

He put a finger up. “No, wait, let me finish. I love you.” His eyes remained shut. “And I know I’ve never said that before now, but I do. And for me, love means loving  _ you _ . You’re not my possession, my thing. I can’t expect you to want to stay with me, and that’s how it is. At least for now.” He opened his eyes. “Roxas, look at me.”

Roxas couldn’t tear his eyes away.  _ I am looking at you.  _ He felt pressure well up in his throat. 

“This just means things will change. I mean, I can’t believe it. Things are going so well with us, you know?” He nuzzled into Roxas’ neck, smiling. “In fact, you’ve been the best partner I’ve ever had. And now you’re leaving me. But in a way,” he reminisced, a distant look on his face, “it all makes sense. You. Me. This shitty timing.”

“Are we still gonna go on our trip to Portugal?”

“Ah -- sorry, okay, you switched gears on me. Portugal,” he nodded, “yeah, of course. That’s not until April, though.”

“I know! Which is why I asked,” Roxas blinked back some tears.

“Oh, Roxas,” Axel massaged his hands, “don’t cry, it’s okay. We’ll be okay.”

“The thing is, I don’t know if we will. You could meet someone, or I could meet someone. And I don’t know when I’ll be in this area again. Just,” he sighed. “Just fuck. I finally start gettings things right, and then I have to let you go. Can you promise me something?”

“Anything.”

“Text me back when I text you. Answer my calls, even if they’re late.”

Axel gripped his hand tightly, a lone tear rolling down his cheek. “Always.”

* * *

 

On the plane to Boston, Roxas sat next to a kind, redheaded woman. Her name was Kairi, and she had offered him a saltwater taffy -- Neapolitan flavored, one of his favorites, from the Pier -- and he poured everything out to her with a simple question of, “so, what brings you to Boston?”

“And,” he gushed, shoveling another handful of airplane crackers in his mouth, Kairi chuckling. “And it’s okay, it really is. I love him, you know? And he taught me so much about everything -- how to expand my circles, how to do pottery, where the best burritos are, and how to love humans. It was hard, I think, in the beginning, because he’s a lot like me. And sometimes, that means being a little insensitive. But even through that,” he took a few huge gulps from his bottle, “I’ve never loved anyone like I’ve loved him. And life is long. It’s so long. And I’m seeing him in Portugal, and I don’t know how it’ll be, but I know that if I just keep loving him through it all, it’ll be alright. I just have a feeling it’ll be alright.”


	6. Uncovering your eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is he who offers clarity, light, radiance...

Uncovering your eyes

* * *

 

It was when the bells tolled and the night women went to sleep that Sora, in the belly of the beast, opened his eyes. He swung his legs over his rickety wooden bedpost, yawning, and lightly rubbed his face. Maybe flushed cheeks, red lips, would make up for the even more restless sleep he had been getting for the past week; moving from the Lower Haight to Dogpatch was met with turbulence. He barely managed to lug half of his belongings across the city. The fog that bookended each coveted slip of daylight sun ruined his favorite shoes. But the Vans! He jumped to his feet, rummaging around in his tattered duffels. That one particularly nice guy had given them to him just yesterday, outside the Wells Fargo on Kearny. What made him nice, exactly? On his stride to the Financial District, he had stopped dead in his tracks.

He said a polite, “Hey man, do you want these?” and reached into his black Patagonia gym bag -- it rested on his right shoulder, while his satchel-colored messenger bag rested on his left -- and handed Sora a pair of lightly-worn, white Vans. He held his gaze on Sora for enough time for there to be a moment of brief awkwardness, but he ignored it, instead disappeared back into the crowd of rushing professionals, eager to export spreadsheets, drop a hundred on lunch, exercise for an hour right after work.

“Oh thank god,” Sora muttered. He found the Vans, nestled in a small bundle of clothes. He inserted his blistered feet, having given up on the hope for socks years ago, and sat against the thin wall of his closet-converted-to-room. The summer air was always so sticky. He could hardly breathe without catching a waft of his own sweat. He was at least grateful to have a place with running water. For years, he had lived on the streets, and fuck, each day was a challenge to his climb out of homelessness. Old friends were no longer friends, their bitter resentment and white-hot jealousy enough to sever off a decade-long companionship. He understood, of course.

His housing situation was not exactly ideal -- living in the closet space of a reserved elderly woman, whose only stipulation to living rent-free was that he cleaned her house every day from top to bottom, no shelf left untouched, and that he did her grocery shopping -- but it was the best he had ever encountered in the city. Since he was fourteen, he knew he had the privilege of objective beauty when he was able to swindle some rich guy into coughing up $200 for a handjob. He said that he was an engineer at Webcor. Before he stumbled out of the bathroom stall, he kissed Sora with wet lips, and Sora knew immediately the taste of repressed queer sexuality.

He heard about this woman -- Effie for short, Maleficent her full name -- through Wakka, another street kid. That’s where Sora’s confusion began. He couldn’t understand why Wakka, Tidus, Kairi, or Xion would pass up free rent on the contingency of housekeeping. They had loosely insulted maids, said that cleaning up was bitch work, that only miserable cunts would do that kind of shit. And that’s exactly what they called Sora, when he returned after being gone for one week -- Effie enlisted him for one week to see if he could be trusted and held up to her standards.

“Are you fucking with us?” Tidus snarled. He balled up his fists and spit, causing some passerby to jump in surprise. (“Then don’t walk this way, bitch!”)

“N-no, actually,” Sora answered. Of course he was nervous to tell them. The greater group would come to learn through word-of-mouth, but his nuclear friends, they deserved to hear directly from him. He would be off the streets starting Monday.

“Isn’t that the hag who lives in Dogpatch? The one I was talking about a few months ago?” Wakka’s eyes darkened, lip twitching, as if someone had taken his meal. “I wanted to hit that up, man. Fucking Christ,” he muttered.

“Uh,” Sora started, unsure. Then he saw Wakka’s eyes flash, and that primal threat engendered a surge in animal energy from Sora, who pounced. “Fuck you. No you didn’t. You fucking said she was an old cunt,” he towered over the rest of them, seething. “You said maids’ work was for miserable idiots who you could pin down and fuck until they bled. So no,” Sora pushed Wakka to the ground of Hyde Street. Wakka fell gratuitously, stunned. “You weren’t trying to _hit that up_ , dude. I waited a month and you did nothing, so I did. I’ve been here longer than any of you. Thought you’d at least be happy for me.”

“You cheated Wakka out of a deal, Sora. How the fuck do you expect us to feel anything for you?” Kairi snapped, her girlish energy morphing into evil. “You’re fucking gone. Out. We’ll see you when we see you,” she sunk back into Xion’s arms, rolling her eyes. “Let us know when you get back to fucking for a living, and we’ll be glad to help you out.” She tapped the soft part of her forearm tauntingly, images of Sora shooting up in the Tenderlion, crying and crying, to mitigate the pain of having been fucked for one too many hours, twinkling in her slanted eyes. What’s a broken body with fifteen hundred dollars compared to just a broken body? An ugly invalid.

Sora walked away. He saw the Vans guy the next day, after having spent the night on the smooth, rain-protected steps of the Wells Fargo outside of the BART station.

* * *

 

“Excuse me, Effie?” Sora approached her from behind. She sat serenely in her armchair, legs propped up. She gently turned to face him.

“Yes, Sora?”

“May I please do my laundry now?”

“Ah. Oh,” she quickly rose from the chair, beckoning Sora to follow her. “Sorry about that. Yes, please feel free to use the amenities as needed. Only yours though, capisce?”

He smiled. At least she was forthright. “Yes, of course.”

“This is where the detergent is,” she motioned to spots in the gargantuan laundry room. He still couldn’t believe the spaciousness of the house. He lived in a closet-bedroom, mostly because she needed to discipline him into the rules of normal living again. Unbeknownst to Sora, she had planned to move him into a bedroom proper in two months for no charge, but necessitated physical proof of his responsibility. That he wouldn’t steal her jewelry, bring home strange women, snort coke off her granite countertops. She had a suspicion that he had been on the streets for at least half a decade; he knew how to move like water, and his eyes gave nothing away. His hands had lost some of their sensitivity, his toes too, she had noticed, when he picked up a baking sheet that had only been out of the oven for five minutes.

“Thank you, Effie.”

“You’re welcome.” She was about to turn away when she took note of his new shoes. “I see you have a new pair of leather shoes.”

“Hmm? Oh,” he turned bright red, knowing immediately her thoughts. “Yeah, some guy gave them to me yesterday. I don’t know,”

“I noticed you were also gone yesterday morning.”

He reddened more. “Right, yes. I was, uh,” he searched for the words a moment too long then gave up. “Yeah, I was panhandling. I don’t know, old habits, I guess. Then some guy gave me his shoes. I guess he just carries around extra things, I don’t know.”

She smiled good-naturedly, her eyes softening. He had been homeless for much longer than she had initially thought, she realized, as he didn’t understand that most young men carried around a second pair of gym clothes with weight-lifting shoes.

“He must have thought you were kind. Probably because you’re finally fixed up. You know. Hair, nails. If you see him again, tell him thank you, and give him this.” She walked over to her cabinet and pulled out a small pill bottle.

“What is this?”

“Glucosamine. It’s for your joints.”

She paused. Then, “where did you see him?”

“Uh, by the bank. The one with the pillars and steps, by the BART.”

“Oh my. You really were far. Do you remember which way he walked?”

“Um, I think he was walking to the left…”

“No good. Fine,” she made her way back to the armchair. “My cell is on the whiteboard in the office. I bought you one of those Safeway smartphones. The grocery list is up. Call me if you run into trouble, dear.”

* * *

 

His back no longer cracked each morning, and his breath was easily freshened by the expensive array of natural listerines provided by Effie each week. He slept on a twelve-inch memory foam mattress, changed the sheets to flannel during the winter, bamboo during the summer. Haircuts became commonplace. Bloody cuticles became something of the past. He went on long walks, sometimes to the Wharf, other times to Hayes Valley. He avoided BART areas with always three blocks separating him from the stations, knowing full well that his old best friends would be there, their eyes black, bodies contorted, waiting. Always waiting.

The bridge was much more beautiful when you you were properly clothed, Sora discovered, on his longest walk yet. Effie had given him her husband’s old jackets a few weeks prior, said that he’d have liked him. And that her husband would’ve liked him.

The red wasn’t red at all, he saw for the first time, probably because he was sober and not wanting for warmth. It looked orange, he thought. Orange or even yellow, and it swayed in the wind. The thought of crossing it on bike terrified him now. He couldn’t believe that he used to do that with all of them, with Wakka and Tidus and Xion and Kairi, would steal bikes right under the noses of their owners, and swipe baguettes from Trader Joe’s and ride all the way to Sausalito in the dead of the night.

On the walk back, he went through the Yerba Buena Gardens. It was only eight miles back home, he reminded himself, feeling the chuff of walking for four hours straight. He checked his phone: 11:44 P.M. He absently noted a group of well-dressed men and women in the distance. It looked like they were drinking straight from a wine bottle, which seemed a bit immature, but he paid no mind. He sighed and sat down behind the wall of water flowing from above head. It may have been the spray of the water, gently etching away at his bronzed face, but Sora knew, knew deeply, that the sudden melancholy bubbling from the soles of his feet were from his loneliness. He loved Effie, he knew that. She proved to be a wonderful woman, so sweet, and it happened that her husband had been a homeless man for a few years after having been buried beneath his debts. She separated houseless-ness from homeless-ness. She recalled him to life.

Still, he had lost an entire network the moment Effie opened her doors to him. His first loves, his caretakers, his street parents -- his real parents, for that matter -- all had vanished, like embers rising into the black sky. He thought about calling Effie, maybe she could just pick him up.

“Oh shit, guys, someone’s here,” a guy whispered, his words ribbony and articulation dynamic.

Sora opened his eyes. He glanced to his left, and saw the same group of five people, their hands holding empty glass bottles. He said nothing.

“Let’s go to the grass?”

“Sure, sure,”

“To the grass!”

“Take this,” someone else said, their voice unwavering. The steps grew distant, and Sora finally relaxed again, sighing into the bench. He closed his eyes.

“I think we know each other.”

Sora reached for his knife -- old habits -- and jumped to his feet.

“Whoa, whoa,” the guy said, putting his hands up. “I come in peace. I, uh,” he cocked his head sideways. “I think I recognize you. But I can’t say how.”

Sora saw nothing in him. None of his Haight friends had silver hair. No one in the Tenderloin would dare to wear black slacks.

“Who are you?” He asked, hand still clenched on his knife.

“Right. Well, I’m Riku. I work in the city, just a few blocks from here. I think I saw you on the BART?”

Sora rolled his eyes. “I don’t take BART.”

“How do you get to work?”

He swallowed, blushing. Why the fuck did he feel embarrassment all of the time? “I work here. In the city. I live here, too.”

Riku walked closer. He sat on the bench and shook his head. “Listen, I’ll be honest with you and just cut the bullshit. We met a few months ago outside of Montgomery. Do you remember? I gave you my shoes.”

“Oh, fuck,” Sora grimaced. He relaxed his body, but the sweat remained. “Yeah, yeah, I remember you. How could I forget,” he chuckled.

“Why do you say that?”

“That was just a hard day for me…” He sighed.

Riku leaned back. “I never saw you there again. I don’t even BART. I live in Hayes Valley. I just had to BART for work that day. But damn,” he grinned, “I took that same train every day, and got off at that station every day, for, like, months. I wanted to see you again.”

Sora blushed. Something about this guy, his brutal honesty, made him want to be brave, too.  “Well,” he began, nervous, “I was homeless. Yeah,” he confirmed when he saw Riku’s eyes bulge with concern. “I found a place, and a job, the day before we met. But I, I don’t know, had some sort of fight with my friends, so I went panhandling. I felt like, maybe, if others treated me just as badly as they had, the pain would subside. And then, you fucking gave me your shoes.” He laughed.

“Those were my gym shoes,” Riku said. He couldn’t get enough of this Sora person. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he had been actually homeless. Suddenly, the weight of living in the tech bubble pierced into him: placated by huge salaries, smoked salmon lunches, frittatas, complementary Apple Watches, he had done nothing about the well-known housing epidemic.

“And I never went to the BART stations again. My friends, they’re usually outside of 24th street or Powell. Have you seen anyone there recently?” He asked, a hopeful rise in his voice.

“No,” Riku confessed. “I feel like a fucking asshole. This whole time, I thought you were just some punk, gorgeous guy who made it a point to never see me. I mean, the city is small, you know? Thought I’d at least see you at a bar or on the pier.”

“Unfortunately, no, I didn’t think about you that deeply. I was transitioning and shit,”

“Yeah, of course, I see that now. I just feel shitty. I’m an idiot.”

Sora paused. He was lying, obviously. Would it be too much to tell Riku, the Vans guy with the Patagonia _everything_ , that he had thought of him for weeks in his bed, panting, imagining how his lips might feel against his neck, his collarbone? How he wondered if his hair was as soft as it looked, and that he orgasmed to thoughts of his cock being sucked by the mystery guy with the Patagonia _everything_ for two weeks straight?

“Well,” Sora began. He smiled. “Well, to tell you the truth, I did look for you. I looked everywhere for you,” he averted his gaze to the ground, “I started going on these long walks just to see if I could spot you. I walked up and down Market, to the Wharf, Hayes, Haight, even the Sunset Districts. I knew I would probably see you by the BART stations, but I just couldn’t do it. I knew my friends would be there.”

Riku gazed intently at him.

“Oh, yeah, my name,” Sora gasped.

“Your name…”

“Is Sora. My name’s Sora.” He awkwardly held out his hand.

“Sora,” Riku repeated, scooting closer to him.

“Yeah?” He met Riku’s gaze.

“I wanted you to find me. It’s funny though, that I found you here. I hate this place.” He smelled like sandalwood. “How old are you?”

Sora felt electricity jolt his stomach, his mind doing flips because _oh my god_. “I’m twenty-three,” he answered. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m asking because I want to kiss you.” Riku held his gaze. The water poured and sloshed and sprayed.

“Y-you don’t even know me, not really,” Sora said. God. Holy shit.

“I know,” Riku responded, his voice calm and soft. “But I want to.”

“Okay,”

“Okay?”

Sora blushed. “Okay, as in, you can kiss me.”

Riku smiled, having done this in his mind already, closed his eyes, and in the darkness, met Sora’s shadowy lips. Their hands met, and light spilled in a flood like a thousand golden vases pouring from the red-yellow sun.


	7. Sunday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genderbent Roxas.

Sunday

* * *

 

“Curve your fingers up a little - ” she gasped into Axel’s neck, breath hot. “Holy _shit_.”

“That’s right, baby,” Axel growled, “you’re so wet.”

He made his way down her neck, licking and sucking. She quivered. Sweat rolled down her back, her stomach. Axel trailed his free hand down her leg, quickly pulled his fingers from her, and propped her legs apart.

“I’m gonna make you come,” he said, his tongue lightly tracing her clit.

“No,” she rolled up, “not like that.” Roxas shook her head. Axel raised an eyebrow. “You’re gonna get inside me. Now.”

“Ah,” he lifted himself up, searching for his wallet. “Whatever you want, babe.”

Then, “You’re gonna have to turn around.”

Axel lifted up her skirt, positioning himself. “You ready?” He asked. She nodded, balling the sheets in her fists, hungry. In the heat of the night, she thought about inevitability, waves rushing to sand, earthquakes; that no one exists on purpose, that everything dies when you least expect it. Then she felt Axel’s hand reach from behind her, his finger flicking her clit, and the sound of skin against skin pierced her thoughts, and she forgot that she had a name.


	8. Murdering the innocent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, an original universe story! Hold on to your seats, ladies and gents.

Murdering the innocent

* * *

 

Facts, and nothing else, keep me moving. I was sent on a mission to watch over my colleague, Terra, and it went terribly wrong. After we lost him -- Ven, too, we also lost him, where  _ was  _ he -- we decided on the abyssal darkness as my final destination. Falling faintly and reaching slowly, I descended. There, where I fell, it all gurgled up, like a demon spitting out bones. I saw nothing but stars for, what I imagined, weeks.

It started off as training. The enemies in the Realm of Darkness attacked, as they do, in the beginning. Some of them almost vanquished me altogether. In the beginning, I countered with strength and refused to attack first. Living beings, I thought, necessitated significance out of sheer life force. Then there was the night, as I jumped and flipped and cartwheeled up what I thought was the Castle of Dreams, when I stumbled across the cruellest monster I had ever seen.

“Is this -- ” I asked as I hid behind a wall. I didn’t want to know. I looked again.

A heartless, one with flames shooting from its mouth, its claws bloody and sharp, stuck its nose in the air, and I saw entrails hanging from its jaw. Its snout - it was covered in blood and bits of white flesh. I glided upward to get a better angle on the beast: beneath its weighty paws were three bodies, which appeared suspiciously as dogs. Their faces, though, looked different from any heartless I had encountered. They almost seemed.. Comforting. I heard whining. To the left, I saw a much larger beast, colored similarly with white and blue, and it had been eviscerated. A pathetic creature, I thought, until I realized that its stomach had been burst open, ripped apart and torn, and that the entrails led to the three smaller pups. Babies. Unborn. 

If I had been careful, I would have known that the poison seeping from my hands, as I cut and tore into the evil beast, its own guts flying and its jaw unhinged, that that was my incipient rage, tearing into my heart and filling in the gaps left by grief and loneliness. It tried to fight me off, the heartless, when I initially shot it off the now-dead fetuses, but it was too weak. Everything in the Realm, I discovered, was too weak. I countered it easily with blizzaga as a reflex; and then, as a choice, I sliced it in half. A piercing shriek vibrated against my ears. The top of its body slid into the mud, its blood oozing. 

I am Master Aqua. I am a Keyblade wielder trained by the late Master Eraqus. My colleague, Terra, loved me when I was a novice wielder, and it caught both of us by surprise. In every sparring match with Eraqus, I held back, for fear of annihilating him. It would be unsavory to turn him into dust; instead, I left that for Terra. There was a time when I believed in the Other, as you’ll come to see. For too long, I sat on that beach, gazing and wanting; I even swam against the currents to get to the light out there, but it pushed me back with brutal force. A wave, a dark, arcing wave, slammed into me once, and I lost my consciousness. I woke up on the shore, hugging my legs, disappointed. I couldn’t shake from me the feeling that something so desired had failed me. I traced my name in the sand again and again, for hours, days even; I wanted the light. I wanted it so badly that it hurt. I clung to myself, the grains of sand poking into my body like spears, picturing that bestial heartless, tearing into the pups, replaying its shrill cry until I felt warm again. I picked up my keyblade and walked on. 


	9. Talking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts. I know that I am way behind, and I would rather catch up than have a few longer pieces. The next few will be drabbles. Thoughts. Mini philosophies and conversations I’ve had with myself. Things might get weird.

Talking

* * *

 

It started off as one of those self-deprecating and venomous comments, aimed like a sword toward your own heart, meant to remove power from anyone else capable of hurting you; when, in reality, the pain transmogrified into something much more massive and more celestial than could have been imagined, like God himself whipped a rod of lightning across the sky and straight into your tiny, fragile, beating heart. Jesus Christ had descended from his throne in heaven to beat in your teeth, you would say, in between the sheets, but only to yourself -- it was always, and only, to yourself. _One of these days,_ you dwell in that sarcastic way, _it’ll be over._ Then the ego comes in to remind you, _as if._

His words floated in the air, about six seconds stale. _Looks like it’s over._

“Well,” Axel stuttered. He scrunched up his face, “okay. Okay, I get it. I just,” he sat there, hunched on the bed, still naked. Bestial.

“What?” Roxas said pointedly, already getting dressed. His grey socks. The Calvin Klein boxers.

“This just isn’t, wasn’t, uh, well, _expected_ …” Axel, deflating and deflating, choked on his breath. _It wasn’t just sex to me_ , he wanted to say.

“I mean, I didn’t really know what to expect,” Roxas belted his jeans coolly, hands steady and warm. He graciously left his shirt on the floor and walked over to sit beside Axel, their weight dimpling the mattress.

“So just like that, huh,”

“Hey, it’s okay. I do like you, Axel. Really. I just like someone else more, right now. And they asked if things could get more serious, so I said okay.”

Axel shook him off. _Serious_ , my fucking ass, he wanted to shout. And that’s how it was with beautiful people, like Roxas: they fucked you for hours, made you orgasm in between the sheets and layers of their blankets, kissed your neck in the mornings, woke you up to show you the fountains from his loft (“Look, Axel! The lights make the water shimmer,” he used to say), then once they had sucked out all of your light, your desire, your purity for love, they let you turn back into dust. People like Roxas, Axel decided, were careless.

“Fine. Sure, whatever,” Axel rose to his feet and fumbled for his clothes, feeling too naked suddenly in front of Roxas.

“Axel,” Roxas began, a new agitation to his voice, “don’t say whatever about it. I mean, can you blame me? You’re the one who’s gonna leave in like two weeks. I live here, this is my life, not just a study abroad thing.”

Roxas’ cold pragmatism infuriated Axel, who, yes, had been studying abroad in Japan, apparently to his own mental detriment. Axel said nothing.

Then, “Axel, what were you trying to do?” Roxas asked, all eyes and inquiry, and he suddenly felt the smoothness of Roxas’ skin beneath him and remembered their first kiss, outside of the Inairi Taisha in Kyoto, both of them in awe of the temple’s rose-colored magnificence, their bodies sweaty and nervous-excited, anticipating with eagerness the others’ wet mouth.

“I’ll get out of your hair, then, Roxas,” Axel stumbled out of the expensive, state-of-the-art Tokyo loft, with its breathtaking view of the city, choking on air. He heard Roxas tread behind him, and he decided right then, that you can’t love the sun. He heard Roxas’ steps falter and slowly stop, yeah, because he’s fucking weak -- he’s so weak that it’s contemptible -- and Axel is in the elevator now, pinching his cheeks to bring color. It had been Axel’s mistake deciding to love him in the first place, their expiration only sixteen weeks long, because what did he expect, falling in love with someone on the other side of the world -- that they would want it, too?

“Too bad,” Axel muttered to himself, “too fucking bad.”

What was left, he decided, was a piece of his heart, wedged into someone else’s life indefinitely: in their pillows, their morning creamer. He hoped to God that Roxas would remember him as he brushed his teeth with that annoying electric toothbrush, that Roxas might linger on his contact name in his phone, let the white light of the iPhone perplex his eyes, because, _fuck_ , Axel thought, ducking into a nearby parking lot, tears pouring from his eyes. _Fuck._


	10. What they save for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I miss my college roommates. You didn't hear it here first, kids, but you'll hear it from me anyway: treasure your fucking friends. They're with you and then they're not. They heal you. They build you. Let them.

What they save for you

* * *

 

“Fuck,” she sighed, realizing that the back door had been locked over night -- not that it shouldn’t have been locked, but she realized that she had fallen into a bad habit of counting on the irresponsibility of her roommates forgetting to lock the door. It made her feel like a complete cock, Namine, when she fumbled around her book bag for her house keys. At twenty-four years old, one could only assume that she was either lost completely or too lackadaisical to care, both of which proved to be unattractive characteristics. San Francisco, save for its automated tech geeks, existed in this particular moment as a betwixt and between, where wealth inequality splayed itself on the streets, constantly reminding its residents that it could give them both gourmet Chinese food at 2am and the potential for armed robbery on the walk home.

“Hey, Nam,” Kairi greeted her, gratuitously pushing the door open.

“Sorry,” Namine said, “sorry, sorry, I couldn’t find my keys. I was just going to wait out here.”

“No worries,” Kairi said. “Nice sweater, by the way. Is that cashmere?” She was all hands all over Namine, fingers gliding over her forearms, midriff, nipples.

“Thanks, Kairi.” Namine reddened.

“You’re lucky that I’m a great friend, Nam,” Kairi winked as she sat at the dining table. “So tell me. How was the dick appointment?”

Namine blushed, stifling a laugh. “Ah, well, not bad,” she said, sliding into the seat across from Kairi. “In fact, not even bad. I might even say it was good.” She reached for her water bottle in the side pocket of her book bag. Kairi eyed her curiously, eager to hear more. In this slant of light, Namine noticed, Kairi’s morning cheer availed itself as compelling, inquiring energy. Her red hair reflected brightly in the sun from above; their skylight often made for a beatific kitchen, light often falling onto the surface of over-medium eggs and avocado toast sprinkled with sharp cheddar cheese.

“I can’t even keep track anymore, to be honest,” Kairi nodded in the distance, “honestly. Like, truly honest. Uh,” she leaned forward. “Did you see Roxas last night? Or was it Riku, maybe Axel? My favorite is the one who made us those waffles that one time.” She shifted her eyes to the stove, eyes glittering. “You know, the one who made those perfectly crisp edges.”

“That was Riku.”

“Damn. Well, hopefully those waffles are an indication of how good his dick is.”

Namine smirked. Their dining table rattled beneath her fists. “If you really want to know…”

“Oh, fuck yes I do. Probably Xion does, too. Xion!” Kairi called off to the darkened hallway. Namine saw light peak from below the bathroom’s heavy oak door.

“Is Xion showering?” Namine asked. Kairi nodded.

“Want some coffee?”

“Please,” Namine asked, “with some of this agave maple syrup I found the other day. Market Bowl,” she confirmed, looking at Kairi, “Market Bowl had it. My favorite place, well, favorite grocery store,”

“Yeah, we all know, dude,”

“Why are you just shutting me up?”

“Please, Nam. We all know that you’re deeply uncomfortable buying produce or anything less than six dollars. You’re, like, the only one who regularly goes to Market Bowl.”

The two bickered, back and forth, until Xion dressed into fitting daytime clothes. Namine and Xion’s schedules were near opposites of each other; Xion worked mostly at night at the restaurant, while Namine worked a day job in the city. Their time together consisted of quick greetings in the hall and Friday happy hours. _Still_ , Namine reminded herself in fourth week of not seeing Xion, _it is about the in-between tenderness._ Kairi, who had gotten way too high last night, was telling Namine about her fucking amazing sex with Sora last night -- “I swear, Namine, I orgasmed four times in a row just from getting eaten out” -- and that she thought that it was the brand of the weed-infused chocolate she bought that made the difference. Kairi, the perpetual KIVA user, had switched to some new brand being promoted by some delivery-only dispensary, and she was never, ever going back. Namine divulged a few details about Riku’s huge cock, but mostly, she told Kairi and Xion about her bad habit.

“I swear, sometimes I just can’t stop talking shit to people. Before Riku and I started fooling around yesterday, I was just calling him out. Telling him that he was shitty for not taking my calls during normal hours, that his actions made me feel totally objectified,” she confessed, then added, “well, for the first few months, I guess.”

“Things run their course, I think,” Kairi said, taking a sip of her black coffee. “Like with me and Sora, it took quite a while for things to finally settle down. I was still dating people until, I don’t know, the sixth month of us being a ‘thing.’”

Xion chimed in, “Nam, I think you just like him. A lot. You have feelings and thoughts, and I feel like you’re usually the chronic dater between all of us. But this time, you’re feeling a little something more,” she rubbed Namine’s shoulder thoughtfully, smiling in a consolatory way, “and that’s amazing. But it might take him a little longer to realize what you feel. But in my opinion, I think he already feels the same.”

Namine blushed. “You guys are flattering me, Jesus Christ,”

“No, we’re really not. You’re hot as hell, multi-talented. So intelligent. Damn,” Kairi kicked her feet beneath the table, “if Sora doesn’t keep a close eye out, I might just make out with you one of these days.”

The oven beeped loudly, its loud shriek piercing Namine’s hungover ears. Xion hopped over to the cabinet, bringing out her signature Nightmare Before Christmas oven mits. Carefully, she reached inside, pulling out a deep tray of some deliciously sweet, warm, and buttery loaf.

“What the fuck? What is that?” Namine asked, incredulous. She eyed Kairi.

“It’s just banana nut bread, Nam. Chill out,” she said, grabbing a knife. “I know this has to cool a bit more, but I don’t care. So,” she began sawing at the edges, “I’m doing it now.”

Namine gave more details about her night to Xion and Kairi -- how Riku had gone down on her for forty-five minutes, had fingered her into oblivion, and that his dick, during doggystyle, hit her g-spot every goddamn time; but, _mostly_ how she couldn’t believe that someone as gorgeous as Riku, with his phenomenal body and long, dirty-blonde hair, wanted her, and only her.

Sacred breakfast respites came and went, Namine reminded herself, when Kairi and Xion excused themselves. She faked a smile, wished them well on their days, feeling a cavernous loneliness descend into her chest, her stomach. Sure, she knew that it was her fault that she saw them on rare occasions these days; most of her time was spent at work, in the art studio, or with Riku. How does one strike that balance between inseparability of friendship and the process of creating new forms of love? Namine didn’t know.

Getting up to refill her coffee, she noticed that her sweater had a few holes in its sleeve toward her wrist. Damn. Cashmere, at that. Then she noticed the pan, now hours cooled, was empty, save for the edges. Gleefully, she picked the four corners -- her favorite spots -- and plopped them onto a plate, then made a beeline to her room, ready to sleep after a night of sex-filled insanity.

‘Hey. Banana bread is incredible. All edges were there for me - it was fate!’ She texted to Xion.

Later, Xion would respond: ‘Glad you like it. We left the corners for you bc we know they’re your favorite.’

Even more later, Namine would wake up to the lone text from her roommate, touched that Xion had remembered such minutiae. She would wrap herself tighter in her blankets, hugging the cashmere sweater around her, feeling the rips in fabric. She loved the holes, she decided, fingering the imperfections.  


	11. Voices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Voices and spirits and admonitions.

Voices

* * *

 

He woke with a start, his torso exploding upward like an emaciated jack-in-the-box, except there was no song to celebrate him, just his pathetic and whimpering breath and the soul-crushing normalcy of his oscillating fan. In the darkness, he saw a gaping hole to blacker darkness, nearly shit his pants, then realized it was only his closet. His glasses, where were his glasses?

It was 5:15 A.M. Too early to ready himself for school, too late to get a decent nap in. With bored resignation, he snaked his hand beneath the sheets. His breathing grew hard. 

“Hey.”

Roxas froze. 

“Hey,” the voice said again, “long time no see, eh?” 

“... Axel?” 

His acidic green eyes rolled dramatically, sending Roxas into a frenzy. “Who else, dipshit?”

Roxas pulled his hand back rapidly, embarrassed. “I, uh, I thought you were gone,” he said, voice shaky, “it’s been so long, Ax.” He fumbled awkwardly, hand darting in between his pillows to find his glasses. 

“I know it has been, baby. I’m here now,” Axel sat, hunched on his stool in the corner of Roxas’ room, staring daggers at him. He smiled slowly -- as he usually did -- and blinked his eyes as if each motion required hours of concentration. Roxas noticed with wanton abandon that his lashes, his black, long lashes, cast tall shadows over his pale cheeks.

“I-I thought you had gone away,” Roxas felt lead drop in his stomach. All of the work he had done for himself -- all of the meditations, the yoga, the clean eating, the counseling, exercise, fucking pottery, all of it -- had been for nothing.

“Never. Not for you, babe,” Axel swayed from his stool, and Roxas saw his muscles tense, even in the dawn’s pale light. He could hear the sounds of morning outside of his room. The light pads of his cat’s paws on the wood; small, brown-bodied birds chirping as light cracked open the sky; the calming hiss of sprinklers going off somewhere. His mother, downstairs, was grinding her coffee, counting out her daily vitamins, when Axel suddenly lunged forward.

“Let me make you feel good,” he demanded, hungry, his arms framing Roxas’s head, “you know I can. Remember how easy it used to be?”

Roxas became dumb, unable to speak, his eyes fluttering as if drunk, as if Axel was the sun. He shook in his bed, felt the back of his body coating in layers of sweat. Then Axel’s tongue lapped at his lips, then his collarbone, then his torso. Roxas watched Axel take his entire cock in his mouth --  _ obscene _ \-- and watched it disappear again and again, Axel’s lips moist, warm, enveloping. After Roxas came, he reluctantly glanced in the direction of Axel’s stool, fucking knowing already that there would only be his closet there, and nothing else, because Axel wasn’t  _ here _ , wouldn’t ever be real, wouldn’t ever come back to life from the dead. The violent normalcy of his modern room put against the banality of his middle-class, track-house home nearly made him vomit, because he remembered, he fucking remembered, that life with Axel had been vibrant, had been courageous and beautiful. Where was the risk in buying organic bananas for a housewarming party? Where would his spiritual limits be tested if all he ever did was journal every night at 10 P.M. on the dot, if he never dared to travel more because his memories made him physically ill? He remembered their first road trip together, when Axel had glanced over at him, his seventeen-year-old eyes doting and full of lust, and said, “Rox. I’m gonna roll down the windows. Put your hand out like this,” he said, making a scoop shape with his palm, “the wind feels soft.”


	12. Those who walk away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: relationship violence.
> 
> If you're ever in a place like this, know that you still have power over your body. You can leave, it'll just be the worst thing you'll ever experience. And then? Then you'll be fine.

Those who walk away

* * *

Rushing through the house, her feet stomping so firmly that she was sure San Francisco itself would splinter into thirds and swallow up with greedy bliss the towering skyscrapers, built on landfill because humans perform their best when showing off their ignorance, she finally found the olive oil. She plucked it from their dilapidated, white-coated pantry shelf, and after a brief deliberation, swiped the entire row of canned chicken into her bag; she grabbed for the dehydrated grains then hurried from the kitchen to her (and Kairi’s) room. Salty drops of sweat formed in her hair. Namine’s chest was cracking open, the anxiety of the present unfurling her insides, a raging typhoon swirling out of her heart. 

_ Namine _ . The front door slammed shut.

God fucking dammit. She breathed deeply, anticipating everything and nothing, deciding that she only needed food, her shoes, wallet, and keys. Kairi, who had opted to attend the annual Pride celebration, had called Namine just an hour after she had left with a few other people.

“Hey, babe,” Kairi greeted, her voice undulating, which meant that she had been drinking.

“Hi,” Namine answered with mild agitation, having been interrupted from a painting, “what’s up, Kai?”

“What’s that?” Kairi asked.

“I said, what’s up? You need something?”

And that’s when it had cracked open. Something about Namine’s voice being suspiciously occupied, insensitive, and for the matter, why had she decided to stay home from Pride, didn’t she get that Kairi felt stupid without her fucking girlfriend with her at the world’s largest queer celebration? Who was she with, Kairi demanded, her throat coated with 80-proof vodka and hoarse from smoking weed, and was Namine ditching Kairi for someone else?

When Namine finally decided to speak, her voice, unsurprisingly, came off as too calm, too poignant and direct.

“I’m at home, Kairi,  _ painting _ and doing nothing else.” She dropped her phone, accidentally, and Kairi took that to mean that Namine’s secret lover had swiped it out of her hand and had shoved his big, gross, male cock inside of Namine’s pink lesbian pussy, and why the fuck did Namine even date guys in the past, didn’t she understand yet that sex with women was so much better?

“Listen,” Namine tried, “I’m not gonna do this. You know I’m here at home, there’s nothing to worry about,” she responded, keeping her cool, until she didn’t. 

“Nice. Real classy, Nam,” Kairi spat out, disgusted, after Namine told her, angrily, that she shouldn’t be mocked for liking men and women, and that no, Kairi  _ wouldn’t  _ know the different kinds of sex that could be had with a man that couldn’t with a woman. 

So when Namine had hung up, angry and hurt, she knew that within fifteen minutes, Kairi would be at the house, because broken people hurt other people. In the minutes before she had decided to leave -- to really leave, as in walk out on the street and go to a friend’s house, sleep on a couch, do dishes as gratitude -- she took two shots of vodka, feeling the weight of the entire world on her shoulders. It had started easy enough, a queer cliche of Firsts between them, Kairi fingering Namine on the subway, accosting strangers when their eyes lingered too long on the two of them -- had they never seen two women together? We both pay the fucking bills, you cunt -- and the adrenaline of confrontation singed their synapses together, their brains firing, desperately, to create a fatal connection between them, to prove that it was more than  _ love  _ between them, it was  _ kismet _ , it was  _ cosmic _ , something that Plato himself had prophesied. They queered the concept, they used to say, of the human beast with four arms and four legs, ripped apart and tossed to the opposite ends of the world. It was titillating pressure between them, all the time and without breaks. Lunch was never lunch; it was their lesbian crusade to bend the literal fibers of human material existence in order to finally, and rightfully, include the sexually-ousted other: the gay, the disabled, the black, the mute. Morning coffees symbolized the beauty of scissoring, contrasted with great humor against the  _ other _ genital-mashing heteros. It wasn’t that Kairi  _ needed _ Namine to text her after every class, in between every shift at work, to make a beeline for home after getting one drink with an old classmate. She didn’t need it, she said; it was just a nervous tick she had, she insisted, because when her mom was forty-two, she didn’t come home once and that was the night that she was beaten up by some White Supremacists and forced to give head to her then ex-husband, and didn’t Namine  _ understand _ that when Kairi had to explain her  _ desires  _ to Namine, it was like she was reliving the past all over again? Did Namine  _ want  _ her to remember when her mom was forcefully mouth-fucked by a bunch of White Supremacists and her dad or something? 

When the pushing started, it became clear that something was amiss. Namine, in the middle of cooking an egg and spinach florentine, asked Kairi how her day was, and Kairi said nothing. She sat in her chair at the table, a blank stare on her face. Namine asked again, put the heat on LOW and walked to the table, offering a hand to console Kairi. Kairi angrily stood up and stomped off, and Namine reached for her hand, desperate. But the hand wasn’t a  _ hand _ , Kairi justified later, as she was fixing the handle on the oven; it was an  _ attack _ , so that’s why Kairi shoved her into the stove, it was just a natural reflex of having grown up in a bad area of town, and sorry that she didn’t grow up rich with her single mom and the White Supremacists prowling the neighborhood.

“ _ Namine _ .”

There was a slight change in the intonation of her voice, Namine noticed.

Kairi stormed into the house while Namine was in the middle of grabbing her last tube of paint and slapped her across the face with an audible pop. Stunned, Namine did nothing, felt the stinging, the rudeness and disrespect. She tried to walk past Kairi, her doting and perfectly intersectional girlfriend with her mixed ethnic heritage and single mom, pushed Kairi with the force of her entire body into the wall, hating every-fucking-thing about her, hating her so much that she wished she were dead. Kairi’s shoulders dented their cheap drywall, and she started crying and shouting litanies of “abuse,” “push,” and the best of all, “don’t you dare fucking touch me, cunt,” and Namine let the words float, stunned.

“That’s the last time you’ll ever slap me.” Namine said, remorse flooding her body.  _ Fuck. The wall. Why did I do that? _

“Oh really? What about what  _ you  _ did, huh? Think you can just fuckin’ push me whenever you want? I just wanted to talk to you, and then you try to shoulder me as you walk by, like the fucking bitch you are!” Kairi’s voice hurt her ears, and Namine felt the vodka more sharply now, her pulse ringing in her ears.

“Listen. I’m not gonna do this. I’m prepared to leave right now, do you see?” She displayed her bag, “unless you just listen to me, and we can talk it out, we’re over. Done.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you,”

“So no, then?”

“What do you fucking mean?” 

“We’re talking about this or I’m leaving.”

“Then fucking leave.”

“Okay.” Namine swore she felt the hallway close in on her, reality contorting as tears slipped out of her eyes, because  _ fuck _ , the love of her life? Treating her like this? Her legs carried her down the stairs and to the front door, numb and splintery everywhere, and she didn’t know what the fuck to do. Then, thankfully, she heard Kairi run from behind her, a giant sob gurgling from her chest, and she turned around to face her -- her darling, her protector and savior -- and Kairi kissed her with everything in her body. Namine melted into her hands, crying and drunk and confused and heartbroken, and then Kairi was biting her neck, biting and licking her nipples until they bled, and suddenly Namine was being fingered, her back hitting the wall with new force with every one of Kairi’s thrusts. She came eight times in under twenty minutes, felt the color drain from her face, saw that Kairi’s fingers were coated in her sticky come, saw Kairi slump to her knees and pass out on the stairs, the alcohol coursing through her system, salty tears staining her cheeks.

Six months had passed before Namine left for good. There had been twenty-six arguments, three instances of physical fighting, eight fights involving their friends, and virtually no sex. Well, there was the one time, when Kairi started yelling at Namine because they hadn’t fucked in five months, and Namine was faced with either 1) defending herself for four hours and not studying for her final the next day, or 2) fucking Kairi for twenty minutes and being done for another five months. Namine opted for the latter. She faked that orgasm, like she had faked every orgasm with Kairi.

* * *

 

Leaving her was easy. On the day she left, she said a few lies, told Kairi she’d be in touch, but she wasn’t. She left for six weeks and then left forever. Following Kairi and the traumatic breakup, Namine met a few good people. There was one person in particular -- a man, no less -- who had asked her, once, if she thought she was beautiful. Namine didn’t know how to respond. The guy, Sora, said that he thought she was obviously physically beautiful, but that he liked her art even more, in fact, he liked her art so much that he might even love her.

“I love your creativity. You’re amazing, you know that?” Sora rolled up a crepe, freshly glazed with Nutella, and brought it to Namine’s mouth, smiling. “In fact,” he said, delighting in her smile as she ate, “I love a lot of things about you. Your painting. Your calligraphy. Your voice,” he leaned over the table, a line of honey dribbling from his mouth, and kissed her gently, “in fact, I think I love  _ you _ .” And the honey and plums and strawberries are just collateral now, some mystic proof of the life-giving forces shared between them; and Namine, when she first had sex with Sora, felt jolts go down her spine and feet and cervix and she realized, later, much later when she was alone on a random Sunday afternoon, painting, that she orgasmed with him, and she cried for nearly an hour, feeling so sorry for her former self. Her shadow. 

“Don’t say anything you don’t want to, Nam,” Sora said, kissing her neck, “I just wanted you to know how I felt. It’s an important thing that shouldn’t be rushed or contrived.”

She wrapped her hand around his neck, tears in her eyes.  _ Thank you _ , she whispered, leaning into him, feeling the soft electric energy of his heart, his body humming against hers. 


	13. Salvation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know -- I'm way behind. To be fair, I was out of town without internet service, so I'm ready to roll this shit out. This piece? It's a feverish afterthought. A stage, a moment, of mourning.

Salvation

* * *

 

Riku brought his fingers to his lips and a surge of seawater rushed into his throat as if an ice-cold trout had slithered into his belly. He shivered. Another wave, in the approaching distance, gained steadily; he could see the wave climb and collapse on itself, its apex repeatedly building and budding, refusing the milky climax of seafoam. The Pacific crashed into him again, obviously, and he tumbled backward, feeling the forceful undertow of the sea. Would he sleep here, he wondered, at the bottom of the sea where crabs scuttle, or would human voices wake him before he drowned?

Mom died today. Or was it yesterday -- he couldn’t remember. The funeral was long and obtuse and ill represented what his mother meant to him, her own son. It was a heat flash, the memory. Blood, blood -- there was so much blood. He could vaguely recall her speaking of some ex-boyfriend, the kind that met his mom when he was eighteen and she was sixteen, and he loved her with a deepdown dangerous love. He loved her so much he shot her just to keep her close. At his cousin’s birthday party, out in Malibu Canyon campground, they had decorated a modest 25-by-25 foot enclosure with colorful papers, a bright pink tent, denim picnic cloths, and an ivory-colored table complete with two frosted cakes, a platter of crudite, blueberry muffins, strawberries, and mangoes. Kairi, the resident birthday girl, had just popped the corner of a giant, curlicued cake bite into her mouth, when Terra emerged from the west edge of the campground and sent a bullet straight into his mother’s chest. His Aunt Xion’s eyes are etched in his mind, wide and clenched, but also resigned to a certain flare of recognition, as if the impending threat, pointed and looming, had finally burst.

By the time he had been washed back to the shore, the rocky coral had lacerated most of his back. His eyes stung with each blink. Standing on his two feet sent sharp jolts down his calves, found a swirling home of alternating pain in his ankles, and he tried not to cry. God, he tried not to cry. The entire world had been blown open. There were no demons, no angels. It was just the world and you. A soft rush of seafoam licked at his feet. He kicked it back angrily, crouching in the sand, his face in his hands. The gunshot, the ripping of muscle from bone, of soul from body -- there it was, in front of him: he saw Terra, saw him from a mile, and he sees his mom’s chest, wonders what made her breasts and heart so special that its only containment, its only preservation was in death itself; and he feels his heart stop for a second, loses breath, and walks back into the surf. He remembers eating peaches with her. He remembers the rough pit in the middle of it, how lovely it was, that something so sweet could contain another thing so dark, lovely, and deep.


	14. Office hours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s that, that thing you see in the distance?

Office hours

* * *

 Roxas first noticed Axel’s leather cowboy boots. They were a deep brown and curved at the toe so they seemed suspicious right away, like he was trying to compensate, with some brand of country hick, for his participation in the elitist university system. Oh, Roxas also noticed that Axel was his teacher’s assistant -- a graduate student instructor -- and the instructor leading his section outside of lecture. It was a required course, Introduction to Earth Systems Science, and Axel Marrin gave his first discussion while looking Roxas square in the eyes, who felt the gaze go straight to his pants for the entire duration of discussion. Axel’s explanation of different visible ultraviolet wavelengths, and most importantly, why the sun sets red, was utterly arousing, and Roxas couldn’t get it out of his mind.

Like these things do, the semester passed in a haze. Roxas attended every lecture, every discussion. He turned homework in early. Not once did he show up to office hours; mostly, they symbolized the deception of an otherworldly academic world in which only the ultra-smart could survive. Picking up on Roxas’ slight (maybe?) over-eagerness in handing in assignments, Axel thought that, maybe, he could just show up during office hours, and they could talk. And Roxas never went to see Axel for a one-on-one. Therefore, when the shy yet brave Roxas sauntered over to Axel at the city’s best Thai restaurant and slapped his hand on Axel’s shoulder and nearly shouted, “do you want to get coffee sometime?”, Axel nearly choked.

“Coffee?” Axel asked incredulously, spitting red curry all over his plate. “Coffee  _ now?” _

Roxas shrugged. “Yeah.”

“You had the entire semester,” Axel coughed out, face reddening beneath his black glasses. He was hunched over his dish at the restaurant’s come-as-you-will style bar, where you were constantly leaning forward to let people behind you walk to their tables, to let servers make their way around the tiny place with silver pitchers of water. 

“Whatever, I know. I just don’t believe in office hours,” Roxas offered a smile. “Can I sit?”

Axel sighed, nodding. “You’re kidding,” he straightened his back. “Why now? What’s the difference?”

“Term is basically over. And now we won’t get in trouble if we go out, right?”

“... I suppose.”

“Great. This is why I never went to office hours,” Roxas smiled at Axel. “And why I refuse to. It’s structural violence!”

“Yeah, that attitude will get you real far,” Axel muttered. 

Roxas rolled his eyes. “Listen. I didn’t want to go to  _ your  _ office hours because, I don’t know, it felt awkward.”

“Wait,” he held up his hand. “You purposefully avoided my office hours? Even after I fucking extended them an hour per week because you and, like, three other students said my original slot wasn’t good enough?” 

Roxas grinned sheepishly, looking at the ground. Axel would have wanted to punch him if he weren’t so attracted to him. The asshole.

“To be fair, you just asked if your proposed hours worked for everyone. And they didn’t. You didn’t specify that you’d accommodate us.”

Axel shook his head good-naturedly, sighing. A small smile bloomed on his face in spite of himself. Roxas, the golden-haired and natural ace at physical geography, one of the few undergrads he had encountered and actually  _ liked,  _ had found him at his favorite Thai restaurant somehow, and wanted to date him. Or something like that. It felt good knowing that he wasn’t crazy for picking up on Roxas’ subtle, flirtatious demeanor.

“Not like you needed office hours anyway,” Axel dismissed it. He took a quick bite of the curry. “Let me finish up here, and then --”

“I have to say something, if I’m being honest,” Roxas dramatically looked up at Axel. He spread his legs out, pelvis angled toward Axel like something ridiculous, and gazed at him with an intensity suggesting he just might explode.

Axel gulped. “Okay…” 

Roxas bit his lip. “I, uh, really liked your discussion sections,” he said pathetically.  _ Fucking Christ.  _ “And, I don’t know. You made me want to try and really give my all. I’m only nineteen, this is the end of my first year here,” he paused. “And you taught me how to be a good student early on… So thanks.”

Axel twitched. “Glad I could be of assistance.” He busied himself with his icy water glass, annoyed that even for a minute, he hoped and thought that  _ maybe  _ this kid could like him. Turns out he just wanted to thank him for doing his damn job? And really, what the actual fuck? This kid, this beautiful and shy and sometimes annoyingly persistent kid, who sent him a lot of emails about nothing -- (“Dear Axel, I hope this message finds you well. In lecture last week, Professor Kos went over the daisy world hypothesis, and I would like more clarity on the feedback loops and surface albedo. Could we speak briefly after class tomorrow? Thank you, -Roxas Tripp.”) -- happened to find him during lunch, ask him out to coffee, and what the fuck did that even mean? He felt so out of the loop these days, having spent his entire life in academia, and at age twenty-five, at the prime of dating life yet having all of his free time taken up by books, he had no idea. What did  _ coffee  _ even mean? Was Roxas Tripp just fucking with him, on some dare to get the nerdy graduate assistant in trouble for sexual harassment? There was just no way --

“I’m blowing it, aren’t I?” 

Axel froze.

“Fuck, okay, all I was trying to say was that I liked your class and I liked doing the homework, well, your homework… Not like I only did your homework, but it just made me think of you, and I wanted you to think I was smart, and... Okay.” He grew redder with each word. Axel’s eyes were bugging out of his face because  _ holy fuck he’s bold.  _ His jaw practically unhinged itself.

“... Alright. Bye.”

Axel was staring into his watery blue eyes one minute and suddenly Roxas vanished, bumping into servers and spilling water and stepping on shoes, making a beeline for the exit. 

“Roxas, wait!” He hopped off the stool, his messenger bag and wallet and laptop sitting messily under the bar, desperate to catch up to the skittish and elusive and hard-working and charming undergraduate from his Thursday section from 10-11 A. M. 

“Please, wait up,” he jogged up to Roxas, who was bouncing his leg nervously at a bus stop.

“Oh fuck,” Roxas looked around, his face slightly flushed. “Listen, I’m sorry, I just saw you sitting in here, and I was gonna talk to you on the last day of exams, but then I pussied out. And seeing you here was like, I don’t know, fate or something.”

Axel sent a sunny smile to him, pushed up his glasses, and plopped down in the bench next to him. “It’s pretty empty here after exams,” he leaned in, “which is good.”

“What?”

“You’re so smart, Roxas, but you’re also clueless.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Mmm,” Axel tentatively touched Roxas’ arm. Roxas was all too aware of it and screamed internally. “About what you were saying. I’m glad you enjoyed having me as your instructor. But the semester is officially over now.”

_ Oh dear fucking god.  _ “Yeah…” Roxas steeled himself, consciously stopping all of his nervous ticks, daring himself to just be fucking brave. “Do you want to maybe get dinner this week? Maybe Friday?”

Axel shook his head, his hand still on Roxas’ arm. “No,” he smiled gently, the winter wind blowing his hair back. “Let’s get dinner tonight.”

Roxas felt the world disappear beneath him. A surge of tingly anxiety shot into his stomach. “O-okay,” he smiled shyly at Axel, his gorgeous and nerdy graduate student instructor, thinking that maybe, and only maybe, this could work out.

Before getting up, Axel squeezed Roxas’ hand. “We can talk about ultraviolet wavelengths all you want.”

“We can. Or we can talk about other things.”

“Oh? What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Maybe your boots. Maybe what we want to do on our second date.”

They smiled shyly at each other, each trembling in their own way.

 


	15. Brunch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sora is a server and Riku trains him on his first shift.

Brunch

* * *

 

I don’t know what I do. What it  _ is.  _ In the beginning, I thought I at least had an idea: you served guests, properly uptight, steaming plates of food. You had no upward mobility, no chance at promotion. You got cold, hard cash at the end of each shift. You outmade the kitchen staff by at least triple their hourly pay. And then it slipped back out of your hands, into the bar economy, when you would go to the place next door for a few cold beers and maybe one shot of amber-colored well whiskey. 

Eventually, you’ll enter the locker room and accidentally spot the half-naked sous chef, and in that moment, you’ll notice that her nipples look like cherries. You’ll become friends with her. Aerith. In the middle of every shift, she’ll save you a plate of the day’s specials, business be damned. You need to eat, she’ll insist. Then there are other times that you’ll be folding napkins. Napkin crease after perfect napkin crease, you’ll check to make sure there are no grease stains; and by the tenth fold, you’ll be flooded with the image of wage work purgatory, your hands developing thick calluses from holding and folding cloths, and the devil himself sinks his spiny hands into your forearms, daring you to stop. 

Most of the time, you will be running. 

Riku was the strongest server. He had feet like lightning and an excellent memory. Append these to his reserved charm, and you are given the type who can walk home at the end of every shift with an easy 28% tip average. I heard that someone once tipped him one-fifty on ten. That’s 1,363%. 

“Sora, right?”

I looked up from my notebook. “Yep, that’s me.”

Riku paused. I noticed his eyes run over my handwriting, my notes. “Good. Today, you’ll follow me.”

I squeaked. “Okay!” Wads and rolls of hundred-dollar bills floated into my mind. 

He gave me a pointed look. “... We’re doing Sunday brunch,” he said it as if to quell my excitement -- the rookie, the bushy-tailed newcomer. His eyes glittered with a secret pleasure, and I wanted to know more. 

He led me to the back of the kitchen, behind the looming wire racks, and handed me a plate. “This,” he snatched a bowl from behind a large saucepan, “is our lavender ginger pancake, made with spelt flour and oatmeal grains, topped with a reduced orange glaze. Taste.” He dropped a square piece onto my plate. It crumbled apart in my mouth, a smooth consistency and rich with punchy citrus flavors. 

“What do you think?”

“So good,” I said, taken aback.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. So good,” he repeated. “You will need to learn how to describe exactly what you taste. Have you worked in food service before?”

I shook my head. 

“Alright. Well, first lesson is this.  _ Don’t  _ ever use the word ‘good.’” He smiled at me after what I assume was a well-intended mean joke. I nodded, feeling the burn hit my face.

“Don’t worry too much. Follow me today. Follow me for every shift you work.”

“Okay.” I wiped my hands on my pants.

Chef rang the bell. Riku smirked at me. “That’s our call. You ready -- Sora, is it?”

My heart jumped into my throat.  _ You can do this.  _ “Y-yeah, Sora.”

“Sunday brunch,” he said quietly. He patted my shoulder. “Stay close to me, but don’t get in my way. Only listen to me, and do not fuck with Chef. Think you can handle that?”

I bit my lip.  _ Shit shit shit.  _ “Y-yeah,” I said quickly, “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Riku straightened his back, fixed the collar of his shirt. “Good. Let’s do this, Sora.”

“Right behind you!”


	16. Redemption

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for physical violence.

Redemption

* * *

 

“So what do you think of that girl, Xion?” Aqua asked Terra, who was driving passenger in their sand rail.

“Xion?” He paused to stretch out his shoulder armor, now covered in coagulated blood, lumpy sand, bits of singed red hair. “Can’t say much. Quiet. Too quiet.” He leaned forward to inspect the dashboard. “The fuck is this, Aqua?”

Aqua glanced at him, exhausted, “what, the bone? That’s a scaphoid,” she said nonchalantly. “What, can you only tell molars apart?”

He chuckled and flicked it out the window. “Guess so. Only ones worth stringing together.” He held up his wrist, clinking tens of bracelets made of people’s teeth.

“Whatever. Anyway,” she turned sharply, the tires squealing when they landed on the asphalt. 

“The whole point is to be  _ quiet,  _ Aqua,” he mumbled.

“ _ Anyway,  _ I think she’s potential trouble. If she’s with them, we’ll have to kill her.”

Terra brought his hand to his mouth. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. She’s elusive. Hard to notice.”

“Which makes her dangerous.”

It was 2:57 A. M. in the Desert Badlands. It had been sunny for the past six months, just nonstop sunshine, and the foliage had dried up. Crumpled cacti lined the streets like emaciated patients, forgotten and undesirable, their once-fleshy green bodies now fallen gods. Sidewalks quivered beneath two hundred pounds of pressure. Blown-up heads melted into the black asphalt: tongues stuck to boots, stained horribly; teeth littered cheap-looking hotels and empty lots; rust-colored clothes were strewn everywhere, from light poles to door thresholds to tree branches. Aqua once kicked an eyeball out of its socket -- it was purely accidental; she only meant to kick the nearest object in frustration, after having missed her killshot, Xemnas, who she had been tracking for nine months, because of an inopportune sneeze. Terra saw the eye shoot out of the skull with a mix of admiration and fear. It glistened in a slimy arc against the sky, and he wondered how Aqua might look riding his cock, if she sweated as much during sex as she did when slicing the throats of outlaws. 

“Let’s go.” She shook his arm impatiently. “What’s the hold up?”

“Right, sorry,” he reached behind him, searching for his shotgun. “Zoned out.”

“Hey,” she grabbed his shoulder, her eyes like daggers. “Do you have a problem right now? Not even in the ‘fuck you’ kind of way. I genuinely need to know if you have your mind on other things, because that’s gonna affect me.”

Terra chuckled. “Aqua, no. I was just zoning out.”

“You’re sure. You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“If you’re distracted, I could die.”

Terra kicked open the door and hopped out. “Listen. You need to get off my ass. Let’s go get our shit from these idiots,” he walked toward the dilapidated high-rise building, humming. “And if we’re lucky, we’ll put an end to this endless, galactic chase of Xion.”

They walked in silence to the eighth floor, sometimes sending each other sly glances, muffling short bursts of laughter, both of them knowing how simple this would be. Years of ruin were evident in the halls with their peeling wallpapers, water-stained ceilings, and the horrific smell of human waste. Smells so pungent that their tongues flexed, rejecting the fatal danger of spoiled flesh. And the sun -- in its six straight month of sun, the Badlands was uninhabitable. The air swelled with an overwhelming warmth, its actual shape occupying a little too much space in their lungs, and seared their eyes.

“Knock?” Aqua whispered to Terra. He shook his head and walked in front of her. With one fluid motion, he kicked down the pathetically ordinary apartment door to a chorus of shrieks.

Aqua was legendary in Galaxy IIA. It was rumored that she lost her eyes in a shoot-off with Riku, himself, but she only wore her eyepatches so that she could protect her vision from the brutal dust storms. She was said to have snapped the necks of the people who put up Ven for ransom with her bare hands -- but that rumor couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, she had done much more: on a Sunday morning on planet V, which hadn’t yet been ravaged by the revolution, she walked right into the kitchen of Sora’s mother’s house. His mother yelped in fright, and how could she have not, with Aqua’s scars, her chainmail armor, shotguns and knives and grenades tethered to her hip; Aqua poured herself a cup of coffee, her eyes glued to his mother, sat down at the table, gulped the scalding liquid in one smooth mouthful, and had walked over to her, carved the letters “V”, “E”, and “N” into her cheek -- which took longer than she had wanted, with the mother crying and yelling and moving her fucking head -- and had ripped her head from her spine. She paged Sora from his mother’s phone and left the house on her single-use ship, the Keyblade, with only a coffee stain on her collar as proof that she had even entered the house.

“Shut up.” Aqua pointed her two guns at their faces -- there were three of them, a blonde, a brunette, and Xion. Terra walked toward the blonde, who was sitting on a black stool, and snatched the loaf of bread from her hands.

“Huh. So you like rye? Didn’t even know they had this anymore, especially here.” He glared at the emaciated boy. “Oh, don’t tell me. You’re from Xanthian, aren’t you? It’s pretty close to here.”

“Oh!” Aqua exclaimed, “is this some sort of  _ reunion?  _ All the way from Xanthian, damn. Well, you chose a horrible day to visit your thieving friends.”

“Can I have a bite of this?” Terra asked. The boy nodded, shivering. “Thanks.”

Xion narrowed her eyes. “Please, let us have this day.”

Aqua, who knew that Xion and Sora had planned to kidnap Ven and put him up for ransom and lost his sleeping form in the betwixt portals, snapped. “Shut the fuck up.” Xion’s face split in half attractively under Aqua’s katana, her body sliced completely from her parietal squama down through her pelvis, and her two halves erupted in blood. The brunette and blonde let out horrified screams, vomiting and shitting, falling to the ground and uttering out “please” and “sorry” and “we didn’t know.” Terra cast magnega, pulling everything in the air in a garbled mass of limbs and blood and food, and electrocuted them to death.

“That’ll do wonders for the smell.” Aqua snickered. She pushed the couch aside, revealing their suitcases. “These fucking kids. I almost feel bad for them.”

“Yeah, well, at least we did it quickly. If Riku or Axel had found them, they would’ve been enslaved… Or worse.”

Aqua checked the locks. “They definitely tried to pick at them. But they’re fine.”

“Really? Weird,”

“Yeah, I know. You’d think they’d have been able to tell that only powerful magic could open them. Do you think,” Aqua started, “do you think that word has gotten out? That people know what’s in here?” She paled.

Terra stammered. “No… I mean, I guess we’ll just figure out in the next few days. If we have a lot of people on our trail, then yes. But I don’t think so.”

“Hmm. Alright,” she picked up their two suitcases. “Let’s go.”

He nodded at her. In lives like these, it was necessary to distance and remove one’s self from the wreckage: the bodies fried to ash, the untouched rye sitting on the chairs, Xion’s eviscerated remains. In the Desert Badlands, horrific things happened. People stole from you -- they had nothing else, so they guarded belongings with their lives -- and in order to retrieve lost items, other people had to kill. Aqua and Terra had been stolen from their whole lives. Terra was eleven when his first can of chicken was taken from his hands; in that Winter Famine, he sliced the thief’s hand with reckless abandon, and he remembers how the boy screamed in horror as he saw the white-flesh of his tendon fall from his hand. Aqua was a different story -- she was only nine when her then-caretaker violated her, defleshed her innocence. 

They stepped over the eviscerated bodies, covering their noses. Terra grabbed for her hand in the hallway, an unconscious thought, and she let him hold it gently, her other hand turning white at the knuckles. 


	17. Andante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They say she moves like the wind. Kairi-centric. 
> 
> Warnings: implicit sexual abuse.

Andante

* * *

 

By the time the train departed for home, I was already wishing for the sweets of the unordinary, the exceptional: orange blossoms sprinkled in bowls of brown-sugar oatmeal, thick milk, crinkly raisins, the minty froth of Turkish coffee. Before then, I couldn’t remember the last time I had spent longer than fifteen minutes in the shower or in a bath. Steamy rooms and warm towels made my skin glow. My uncle told me it would cleanse me from the inside out. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. On the Tuesday that week, we were all sitting beneath the veranda--  the stars looked like fireflies that night -- and I remember hearing someone say, a deeper voice, something about the baths.

“Well, you do know, Aqua, how the baths are when you’re older.”

I looked at Aqua, youthful and naive and curious. 

She responded, “Right. The baths.” 

It was a family friend, Hayner, who she was speaking to. He winked. “Cleansing. De-toxifying,” he picked up a glass bottle and brought it to his mouth, “from the inside out, no?”

She rolled her eyes. I could see a firmness in her neck; later, I would understand this muscle, too. Holding the tongue. Bleeding first from the mouth and not from between the legs. Bleeding from holding back, from deciding that silence could keep one safer than speech. 

Pence, my uncle, kicked back in his chair, hands resting on his arms. Cocky. “I remember when I was little, visiting here. It was so much different back then,” he surveyed the small circle of us. I sensed something behind me, so I looked at the wall against my back. When I turned my gaze back to the group, I noticed that Aqua’s pink-colored drink had been emptied, I noticed that her mouth was not indicative of a mouth that had just ingested something cold. Uncle Pence had folded his hands in his lap. He looked pitiful, with his large brown eyes downcast, his shirt wet with sweat.

“I forgot to mention to you,” Aqua began, “we won’t be coming here anymore. Kairi and me,” she motioned to me, smiling in her mysterious way. “Kairi and I are moving on from this place. This is our last visit. We leave tonight.”

Aqua grabbed my hand, coaxing me inside, and I didn’t know why we were leaving suddenly. As we left the house, my eggshell-white toga trailed behind us, my sandals leaving small wet imprints on the snow. I hadn’t even taken the green laurels from my hair out, and neither had she. Sweat glistened on her brow, and I thought she looked nothing short of angelic. 

The train departed quickly. I scrunched my hands up and cried into my fists. The exotic tastes of citrus taunted me; I wanted more of it, more foods that made me feel like my blood would burst out of my skin. I wanted to eat more hard rinds and spiky fruits that tested the give of my tongue, the insides of my cheeks. Home meant ceiling fans and black tea. I would go to school with my wide-ruled books and unassuming black folders. The vista gave me warmth, gave me variation, hope, gave me ruin. I remember once, someone taking my bahn mi from my hand while I was under the veranda. I had fallen asleep, I think, and it was coming apart in my hand; in my dream, the bean sprouts were gently tugged out, as if by clandestine movement, and the baguette halves jumped up and down, becoming soggy and losing their tough membrane. I awoke with a start, seeing someone off in the distance. They moved unnaturally, like a beast from the book of revelations, and I wondered where they had been and where they were going; my bahn mi had come apart, was littered across the tops of my legs, and my toga was stained with colors of fermented vegetables. The vista symbolized togetherness. It was a place of familial worship and of non-blood bonds, alike. My body had been touched in all of the wrong places by all of the wrong men -- my uncles, my cousins, friends -- and I still crave the decadence of the vista. The steamed sweet potatoes and the down-feather pillows. I want moonlit lakes and lotus flowers, lily pads and oil massages. Aqua said to me, we would never return to the vista. But did she understand it, really, my only other option at living? My other life meant gray carpets and instant potatoes. It meant five-minute showers, stale rotini, and slumber in a box-spring bed. 

Is this the dance, that fateful dance, I wondered, as the beautiful houses leapt farther and farther back as the train chugged forward? Aqua, I want to say. Aqua, please, take me to the land of freedom; I can handle my legs being pried open for libidinal gain, I will be quiet when they walk me into the sauna. Please, I want to say. Please let me feel anything but ordinary. 


	18. Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A 5k story should make up for some absence. Akuroku goodness. Genderbending because I'm into chick Roxas. Also, this is RAW, meaning I haven't edited due to time constraint, so please forgive any obvious errors. Will fix soon!

Axel Marrin, sitting on the third cushion to the left of aisle C, stares straight forward, eight years of commuting now a nonchalant comfort, and he listens to a podcast on criminal intent. Like Axel, we privilege ourselves the thought that none of this otherness applies to us: the moral degradation, the didactic rules governing insatiability, rag-and-bone fashion, yardsticks of spiked frozen lemonade, sex under the stars. These activities are the stuff of Hollywood nightmares and dreams; they serve specific purposes, whether to inspire, to incite fear, to incense, and are obscured by finances. King Capitalism, he is a paradoxical man, teasing law-abiding citizens like us with thoughts of wild, unsynchronized dancing while making these Nietzschean bacchanals impossible. The scalpel of peer pressure slices deeply into our lives, we say, as we wipe the vomit from our infants’ mouths; it is the externality that has hammered us into the modal perfection, not us. It is why you are forced to dream a dream-house closer to your work than to the open coast.

Axel’s suits have been pressed for the week -- navy this time. He is a bit nervous to introduce this new palette at work, the Metropolitan Intercity Railway. It is the Monday after the season’s first real sea storm; he smells with abandon the dried rain on concrete, he wonders how pizza might have tasted while sitting on the pier, wonders how his feet might feel if they were to dip in the salty Pacific on a lunch break. The train slows to a well-timed stop; it is his station. He rises politely, gingerly brushes along the passerby, similarly occupied by the unsocial social media quelling the humanity in their faces, and exits with a firm two-step rhythm toward that gate, his beating heart anticipating the softness of the swivel chair in his east-facing office. He tastes the coconut milk latte, its froth on his tongue, in his mind’s eye, and fuels the half-mile walk to his building with thoughts of valediction to the rest of the whirring world.

“Mr. Marrin?”

“Y-yes,” Axel tore his eyes from his notepad. “Pardon me. What was that?”

“The Chamber of Commerce called. Helia said she is very sorry, but she must reschedule your lunch today. Family emergency.”

He nodded, nonplussed. “Right,” he dropped his pen on the floor, “thank you, Aerith.” She smiled politely, a small acknowledgement of her always temporary presence in his office, and quietly exitted.

It was about 11:43 A. M. before he was able to finally rationalize the canceled meeting; in his six years of being an executive, he had never rescheduled. This was, in part, due to his own disdain to wasting time. The weight of his reputation also scared off customers and clients from canceling. The industry word on Axel Marrin was one of few phrases: timely, no-nonsense, succinct. In the darker corners of happy hour, though, he was described in less kind words: mundane, flaccid. Excruciatingly boring. Unhappy. He never meandered too far from the thoughts put forth by his podcasts. In a perverse move, he thought, he picked up the Criminality: Minds Exposed title on advice from a colleague; even then, he listened for fifteen minutes at a time, on the train -- always on the train -- protected by the fluorescent sterility, the polished leather shoes surrounding his own, the expensive perfumes. He took great pride in having been the lead engineer for the city’s main subway system. Their trains’ punctuality rivaled Tokyo; their train operators boasted higher pays than most.

During his time in college, he spent most of his time between internships and books, always polishing with finer and finer granularity the skills of his resume. There was the summer he spent in Spain, once, with a wad of cash he won from a robotics competition; he doesn’t think of this time often, if at all. He does remember programming the software for his robot, though, his elegant, metal keepsake. The code, he found, was too weighty, too cumbersome; he spent three straight days using substitution, transitive properties, natural language processing. Horns blaring down on him, he gently padded the lines on lines with easier-to-read comments, and suddenly, his Professor of A. I. was flashing bright camera lights in front of him, spiffing him up with slicked-back hair and brown loafers. He remembers smiling widely while looking into hundreds of camera holes, perplexed mostly, words and shouts of “college genius” and “future Zuckerberg” inundating him completely. He didn’t want to go to Spain, he remembers; but when your best friend shouts, for the eighth time in a row, “You fucking NEED to go somewhere wild, man! You have 20K!”, you go.

That was how it felt to die, he thought, running around in the hot, dusty air with thin fabric on his shoulders, chugging soured wine that purpled his vision and pounded his skull. There was a bull -- at least he thinks there was a bull -- chasing him, or he was chasing it, and he hears the sound of skin-slapping sex beneath the risers of the golden-clad Chamber Chorus from So-and-So University. 20K and he only spent three thousand of it. The booksellers, the servers, singers, riveters, and pickpockets all muttered at him in Spanish, a class he never bothered to take because Spaniards can’t program, not like him, not by a mile -- and he remembers one night, slumping against the stony wall of some restaurant, punch drunk and lips redder than a rose, hearing a distant voice. It wasn’t beautiful, he remembers thinking; but can a person blind to their own beauty recognize it in forms other than physical? There he was, a tanned American boy with rust-colored hair that traveled to the nape of his neck, sitting in blissful Spain, wine pumping his blood and coloring his lovely cheeks; dark-haired women giggled upon his approach, even small children gaped at his sculpted beauty; and he sat, miserably, wishing only for the comfort of his Lenovo, a rubber duck, and lathering soap.

* * *

 

Her throat has been raw for five days now. Manuka honey, the legendary elixir, has not aided the process of vocal renewal; she is scheduled to sing for the city in only seven days. It is one the most glitzy gigs of the year, coming with a fat paycheck of  10K for one performance, and she desperately needs the money. After her eviction, she’s been sleeping on her old college roommate’s couch, her person reduced to a carry-on sized suitcase, a linen bag for her day job at the restaurant, a garment bag for her performance gowns, and dental floss. The floss is everywhere: every bag holds it, and she realizes it is bordering on neurotic to keep so many with her, but dental isn’t covered on any insurance she’s ever had, and her shiny smile brings in an extra 3K a month. And she needs the money, she reminds herself yet again, falling back into a cavernous sleep, the lumpy cushions of the couch digging into the wrong places along her spine.

“You still sick?” Sora asked, a towel covering his torso.

Roxas nodded pathetically. “Yeah. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

He grunted in acknowledgement. “You don’t look bad. Here,” he got down on his knees to feel her forehead with his lips. “You’re not hot. No fever. Good,” he padded across the wooden floors to the kitchen, shuffling around in the cabinets. “This is ma-po tofu. I swear by it. Eat it with some hot tea, and I think you’ll feel better.”

She gave a weak _“thanks!”_ and watched Sora dart to his bedroom. _Ma-po tofu. As if._

* * *

 

“Po tofu?” Roxas asks for the third time, embarrassment seeping into her eyes. “It’s supposed to be hot, like a soup.” She ended up going out, like she usually does, some sort of cyclical punishment to herself. She really can’t afford it.

From the corner of her eye, she sees a man looking at her, a business type, and she rolls her eyes, bored. The server looks at her again, his English the worst she’s heard in months, and he bows politely, says something unintelligible and leaves.

For a moment, she looks over the menu again, confused. _What the fuck?_ She wants to feel better, that’s it, and why is it a difficult thing to ask of someone else, to get food for her?

Her mom visited the day before. They met in Central Park because it doesn’t exactly make for a compelling conversation, to show off her rags and poverty and say that she sort-of owns the kitchen but not really. She can see it now: “Hey, Mom. How are things going for me? Well, let’s see, I’m about to finish paying off my debt to Juilliard, so that’s good. But I also work too much, barely make enough net income to eat, and I’m technically homeless, bumming off my old roommates. I’m also seriously considering sucking dick for cash. I eat out too much and was evicted last month. I’m singing at the Met next week. I still don’t have health insurance.”

Her mom wrote out a check of eight thousand to Roxas, said that she missed her, and when would she come home? New York was rough, and there were a lot of great opportunities in Cincinnati, too. Roxas left abruptly, their post-dinner walk having gone for far too long, said she’d call, both knowing she never would. In a huff, Roxas picked up her silk scarf from Saks, disappeared into the bustling nothingness that was New York. Her mom hailed a cab to the airport. Four minutes into the ride, and she started crying, sniffling. But Roxas never saw this part: she only saw the holier-than-thou dismissal. She saw the past in her mother’s eyes, a sort of dilated truth of the years her mother spent alienating her. When would she start doing something serious, did she think about having kids anytime soon, didn’t she know that past age twenty-eight and her chances of marriage would plummet? It is easier to intentionally fuck up your life when you think that no one gives a shit about you, that you’re the one they expect to fail. It’s easier to say they don’t understand what it means to be an artist when your strongest associations with them are coercive motherhood, a cultish domesticity, a type of virulent femininity dependent on your relinquishment of all power to someone with different genitals than you. She remembers the first time she told her parents to fuck off.

“ _Ma-po tofu,_ Miss,”

“Huh?”

He can’t be more than nineteen. The server delicately sets her dish down, refills her water with a courtesy and grace that makes her want to squeal, and moves on to his next table.

She slurps up the food with wanton lust, her eyes practically jumping out of her head, and the hot tea soothes her overused throat. Singing, she decides, is so much fucking work. And in the middle of her catharsis, she again notices the business-looking guy from earlier. She notices that he’s staring at her again, his mouth a few centimeters open, and she can’t take it.

“Can I fucking help you?”

He’s taken aback, clearly surprised, and shoots his eyes down. “N-no, sorry…”

“No, I want to know. What. Tell me.”

It’s a small restaurant, R&G, a place she goes to often; the staff knows her by name, knows her moods and meager tips and good intentions and that she gives free concerts to them once a year. The guy who’s dressed in _navy_ , navy of all colors, has the gall to stare at her as she eats in her own territory?

“Um,” he starts, fiddling with his chopsticks, “I’ve just…” With each passing second, he becomes redder. “I’ve never seen a lady eat like that before.”

Her server, Ay, hears him, and stifles a laugh. Roxas glowers at him, annoyed, that he has seen through her Audrey Hepburn facade; you can doll yourself up in all of the designer name scarves, shoes, and blouses, but you can’t take the unkempt habits out of the poor girl. The _poor_ girl.

“Hmm,” Roxas leans back, her temper quelled. “Alright, I accept that.” She picks up her bowl and walks to his table, silently delighting in his obvious uncertainty with the situation. “Hi, I’m Roxas.” She stretches out her hand as if she’s done this a million times before.

“What’s that you’re eating?” The guy smells like lemongrass and his hair is tied back in a low bun, like some version of a clean-shaven samurai.

“Tofu. Are you alright?” She can’t believe how inept he is, how he comes off as someone who hasn’t had a human interaction in years.

He pauses, alarmed. “What? I feel fine. Why do you ask?”

“Uh. First of all, you’re wearing navy. Who the hell would wear that? You were also literally staring at me earlier,” she motions to her now-abandoned table. “So you’re either autistic or really unaware of yourself. So you tell me.”

Axel is too shocked to respond at first; he bites his lower lip. _I’m Axel_ , he knows he should say. _Fucking Helia. Fucking meeting cancellation. I’m Axel. I work at the Metropolitan Intercity Railway as their CFO. I’m thirty-four and--_

“Hello?” She waves her hand in his face, feeling a stirring in her chest.

“I’m Axel,” he says, his face as red as a beet. “My meetings were all canceled today. I usually never come to the Crescent Downtown for anything, much less lunch. My secretary told me about this place, though, she said it had great noodles. Chow fun, if I recall correctly.” He steadies his breath, his executive confidence flooding back into him. “Also, I’m not an autist. That’s pretty offensive to say, actually,”

She shrugs and continues slurping down the tofu, downing the tea. “Whatever, I don’t know you.” She decides that he’s dead weight, a useless rudder, an untuned string.

“Alright. So, what about you? Are you some sympathy customer here?” Without warning, he scans her, feeling a sense of vengefulness flood into him for having been so scrutinized under her gaze. “So it looks like those clothes are old, but your nails and hair are immaculate, which tells me that you have expensive habits but not necessarily a strong income. You’re obviously very extroverted, so you’re probably confident, maybe a performer type. Or you’re a rich only child who just takes daddy’s money and runs all over the world.” He sees a reaction start in her, making its way up her spine like a slow prickling. “Oh, strike a chord? What’s next, Bogota?”

Roxas, without preamble, reaches under the table for his pocket, and he nearly yelps as her hand quickly slides past his groin and slips his wallet from his pocket. She empties its contents on the table, livid. “Just what I’d expect. Black Visa, a few hundreds, an old license. No photos of those dear to you,” she holds a hundred in the air, waving it around her face, “mind if I pay with this?”

Axel is still reeling, his right leg covered in ridiculous goosebumps, his body rising in temperature. _I’m Axel, I’m thirty-four, the CFO of a company, and I haven’t had time for a girlfriend in six years._

“G-go ahead,” he can barely speak, can barely even look at her, can’t stand the sight of her bow-shaped lips, her swan-like neck.

She stops Ay as he walks by, winks at him, “keep the change.” He nods and bows gracefully, having received something like a $70 tip, and gives her two fortune cookies.

“One for you and one for boyfriend.”

Axel and Roxas freeze then, eyes locked on each other.

“Fuck you.”

Roxas stands up, shakes out her hair, and looks at Axel one more time. He refuses her gaze and stands to match her. “Need something, sweetheart?” His voice is laced with daggers.

“Nothing at all, dear,” she makes her way toward the exit, and to her displeasure, he follows her out the door, his jaw strong and unforgiving. “What, are you fucking following me now?”

“Only one exit.” He points to the narrow threshold. She smells like orchids and looks like she should be in a magazine. It was too bad that she was so prickly, so judgmental, lonely.

“Whatever. Just leave me alone,” Roxas feels for her phone, now vibrating in her pocket. She debates taking the call in front of him -- _Incoming call: Sora_ \-- and then glares at him, because why the fuck shouldn’t she, and answers. “Sora, hey.”

Axel watches her, and he can’t decide if it’s solely to annoy her, or if he’s actually interested in the call. Once she turns back to face him, a few minutes into the conversation, he makes sure that she sees him roll his eyes at her, then casually walks off back toward his office, just a mile away. He felt odd, like maybe he should thank her for sitting with him, but then he remembers that she practically stole a hundred from him just to prove a point -- to the both of them, that he has too much cash to care for, that she can do that to him -- and he decides to stop caring. Too much emotion. Too much gray, hippie complexity. Bullshit.

But then he realizes that she still has his wallet, and he’s only four blocks away from the restaurant when he runs into her, her face clearly changed.

“Roxas,” he says, surprised. “I need my wallet.”

She hands it to him without pause, and he’s again caught off guard.

“Something the matter?”

“Um,” her eyes are downcast, and she’s rubbing her arms, “no.”

“Odd. I didn’t take you for a liar, of all things.”

“What’s it to you?” Roxas looks at him with changeling eyes, ready to strike him down. “It was just my roommate. Er, sort-of roommate. I was crashing with him for a few weeks,”

“Was?”

“Yeah.”

Then Axel put two and two together, and he was overwhelmed with a sense of urgency, of conflict. “Are you fucking homeless?”

She shakes her head. “No,” swallowing her spit, she shrugs. “Well, I dunno. I was evicted last week. Sora said his landlord found out I was staying there, rent-free.”

“Oh,” Axel puts his hands in his pockets and looks at the sidewalk. “I mean,” he shakes his head, and then his words come up like vomit. “I have an extra room, if you need. Like, a lot of extra rooms, if you need.”

Her mouth tightens. What would it mean, to go to some strange, not-autist’s apartment, that she met at R&G? Would he charge her? Would he expect her to fuck him for each night she was there? What kind of pervert weirdo would be thirty-four and no wife, no girlfriend, nothing? Did he have atrocious habits, was he abusive? Roxas is desperate, has nowhere to go, and she’s singing at the Met next week, and she really needs the money. She only slept in Central Park once, and the mud seeped into her thong and gave her a yeast infection for weeks, and she decides that being fucked by him would be better than sleeping in a bumpy park bench.

“Do you have a piano?”

* * *

 

In the beginning, it was like living with a ghost. Axel’s presence around his apartment was sparse: a few coffee grounds by the faucet here and there, the uncurtained balconies, the polite shuffling of slippers on tile at 7 in the morning. He never woke her, never questioned her morning habits. He learned to buy pulp-free organic orange juice every week, learned to be okay with someone else sucking up the Internet bandwidth, and stopped listening to his nightly podcasts because, at night time, she practiced singing. The first time he heard her, it sounded like some distant echo, something not quite beautiful and not quite modest. He gingerly crept from his heat-controlled bathroom, white towel still wrapped around his torso, to the parlor, where he set up a grand piano for guests to play at house parties, and sunk into the floor, just out of sight, in the safe and darkened hallway. Uttering spitfire latinate phrases, breathing heavily and then sometimes lightly, cursing when she forgot to attack the vowel, he saw her in his mind’s eye, struggling at the piano bench. He wondered if she walked to the windows, like he did, to give herself breaks every now and then.

When he would come home from work, he often saw her situated on the couch, a sugary doughnut in one hand, and a piece of sheet music in the other. It wasn’t easy, not by any means, cohabitating with someone. By the fourth month, they were almost friends; they texted each other when they knew they would get home past midnight, would call during the day to see if Roxas needed orange juice or if Axel needed seltzer water. She was a wreck, a complete slob, leaving her dishes in the sink with crusted-over eggs like some acrylic custard, and didn’t she fucking get it, that the orange would stain his china? But didn’t _he_ get it, that you shouldn’t use china if you don’t want it to be eaten on?

After she sang at the Met -- which she didn’t dare to mention to him, when she still thought he was a cloying bastard -- her monthly income became more steady. Her exposure had skyrocketed, and she booked at least one gig a week that paid two grand. At age twenty-nine, she knew she was a failure, didn’t care to mention it to anyone else. Axel knew, for god’s sake, he got off on having her in his house, rent-free and no strings attached, like some sick charity project. Unmarried, crass, jagged in all the wrong places, well-mannered enough to sit at Christmas Puddings but not enough to fool some bullshit CFO while gobbling Chinese food, Roxas texted him one afternoon, after he closed a deal with a major nonprofit to sponsor the hygiene of the individual trains. Outsourcing, he once told her, was the key to maintaining high profit margins.

_Hey._

Axel’s phone buzzes as soon as he closes the door to the conference room. _Hey._

It doesn’t even take a minute for the three dots to show up in their text conversation -- he also bought her an iPhone, the day after she hauled her whopping three bags into his place, after sneering at her pathetic Firefly flip phone.

_I can pay you rent._

He grinned and sent a curt reply: _My venmo is Axel-Marrin-1. Cough it up._

It is irritating, having to reminder her every fucking month, to pay him on the first. He would only let her pay him $500 because, what’s the point, he didn’t need the money. He planned on saving up all of her rent and then giving it back to her once she moved out. And in these internal conversations with himself, he couldn’t help but frown for only a moment. _When._

Criminal Intent proved to be a boring podcast, he thought, in the sixth month listening to it. Fluorescent sterility, the overhead lighting on each train car, began to annoy him like something mighty; the oppressive glare reminded him of underground societies, where you were never allowed to go outside and turn your face toward the warm and golden sun. Oh, and he stopped wearing navy immediately after Roxas insulted his poor choice in wardrobe. Mid-level managers invited him to golf more often, and a few of the interns started to spend more time in his office, drawing silly diagrams on his giant whiteboard, asking him if he would explain to them supply and demand, and what was it like winning the famous robotics competition when he was only nineteen? He flew into a fervor, mouth rushing faster than he could process, and soon the other executives had meandered into his office space, puzzled to see their no-nonsense CFO lighting up, passionate, full of feeling and vibrancy. The memories of college floated in his head, and he felt somewhere inside the old blissfulness of optimism. Of futurism. In fact, he felt is so strongly that, at happy hour that night, on some swanky rooftop in New York, where you could see the rivers pulsing and the sexy silhouette of the city against the turquoise sky, he remembered Roxas’ red lips and her porcelain skin, and then after another smoky shot of whiskey, he remembered when she brought some tall, long-haired guy home and fucked him in the shower; and he felt the prickling of anger and jealousy so strongly that he cozied up to some bouncy blonde at the bar, cozied up to her so much that they fucked in the marbled bathroom and he imagined.

“Congrats,” Roxas said that night when he stumbled into their (his?) apartment, his tie loosened and hair sticking in all directions. She was in the kitchen pouring herself a glass of ice-cold orange juice, pulp-free, dressed in a devastating black gown that went to the floor and highlighted her shoulders, her milky collarbone. Axel gazed at her, feeling the alcohol slowly dilute, and thought she looked like the only woman in existence.

“Why congrats?” He asked, slowly walking over to the kitchen.

She scoffed and took a gulp of juice. “Finally got laid,” she smiles but it’s not a real smile. “Nice job, Boss.”

“What?” And he doesn’t know when, exactly, he started to care what she thought of him. He pulled his jacket off, tossed it on the table, and gave her a pointed look. “Why do you give a fuck?”

“I don’t. I’m just saying, congrats.”

Maybe it was after she told him about her mother, how she didn’t receive any emotional support growing up, how her family thought her art was a farce. Maybe it was after he snuck away from work on the day she sang at the Met -- he read the news -- and heard her spill Italian poetry from her aching lips, like a swirling gulf of roses and latin and ritualism. It may have started the hour after being spellbound by her performance, he thinks now; he rushed back to his office, practically sprinted into the building, and pulled up all of the Italian arias he could find on Google, searched for translations of her songs, and was lulled into a prophetic slumber of artwork, privileging himself the thought that she sang to him those godly words of the spirit.

“Hey,” he walked to her side of the kitchen, “why are you saying that?” It’s the closest they’ve ever been, she realizes. It had been weeks of them, in their eighth month living together, watching old movies late at night together, their feet both draped in afghans across the couch, of fleeting glances full of want when she looked at his forearms, how his chest firmed beneath his shirt, when she noticed the particular curve of his lips. And he was not immune to it, her beauty: he often wondered, on those nights, after they became friends, if her ankles were as soft as her hair, and how might she feel against his body, his stomach, pelvis.

It was somewhere in the middle of it all, he decides, when she starts to walk away from him at the sink, that he grabs for her hand, and she bites her lip to keep from shouting at him, and when she tries to push him away, he falters to look at her, eyes full of concern, and then she sees him -- really sees him, sees his ordinariness fade away -- and pulls him toward her, their lips smashing into each other like a car crash. It’s definitely somewhere in the middle, they both decide, nodding into each other’s bodies, shuddering and gasping as they orgasm like it’s the end of the world. Whether it was the Spanish or the Italian, the lack of life lived or the hackneyed way of living in complete decadence, they collided into each other, two perfect storms without a center, both swirling at high speeds. Sometimes she can’t speak to him because she just can’t, she’ll insist, and that’s when he learns how to kiss her to sleep, to massage her hands until she feels okay to talk again. He learns to appreciate her well-trained choral tongue, learns to undress her with an agility he thought he’d never possess, and she learns to take him apart, one bar by one bar, to get at his interiority, to take away the machine inside of him.

It’s difficult in the beginning, they both discover, as they realize that they’ve fallen in love with the form of a human opposite their own passions. Axel never sings, only invests; he buys pianos for their looks, not for playing. Roxas thought he initially knew nothing about love -- didn’t know how to play, how to tell silly stories, or cry together -- but she realizes, in a certain light, that he bathes the same way as her, with lathering soaps and warm, bubbly water; and she wants to take it apart, her and him, and she sits with him in his iron-toed bathtub, helps wash his hair and he rubs sunscreen on her back where she can’t reach. Her raw heart learns to accept support, and he learns to recognize beauty in places he never thought possible -- the alleys of Thailand, the ivy on the side of stucco houses, in the smell of Turkish coffees and clinking dinner plates late at night along the Thames -- and he sees it, now more than ever, where it hid from him his entire life. He learned to play Fur Elise. His technique is horrible, Roxas says, sliding onto the bench beside him, placing her fingers over his, but he’ll learn. If he listens to her careful instruction, and if he can pay her steep price, he’ll learn.

“Teach me, then,” he says, smiling into her mouth.

“Surely, Mr. Marrin.” She swivels around to sit on his lap, and gently touches his cheek, feeling nothing but the weight of gravity and the pull of the moon as he closes the distance between their lips, a somatic ritual to which they both give, give, give. Relentlessly. 


	19. Ointment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Kairi-centric, a look into the immense space taken up by Sora, and how it relates to undifferentiated desire to do well.
> 
> Real notes: my body tells me no.

Ointment

* * *

 

Once you give up the ghost, the rest of life follows, even in the midst of chaos. He’s a third-grader, a beautiful blonde boy with an air of alacrity and moves briskly, his hands perpetually wet with sweat. Playground King, he runs across the monkey bars to the irritation of his teachers; the other boys, the ones whose hair is golden like the sun, play with him too. Dragging their knuckles across the metal beams, they gallop around the woodchip pile, gallivanting around the sandbox as if they are the sole owners of it all, yelping and howling with laughter. Sora, natural-born leader, claims the swings, the hopscotch squares, the brick wall, the fields, even the small purple flowers dotting the clovers by the girls’ restrooms. He takes it upon himself to announce it to them all, the third grade recess, that he’s starting a kickball team, and he wants everyone to join, and may the best players win. The people you expect to join join. Kairi sees him with darkened eyes, knowing with full conviction that she would be picked last because of her weak shins, and when he asks her why she doesn’t want to play, she just runs past him and says it’s because she likes to build sand castles.

When a mantle plume reaches the upper crust of the lithosphere, it shoots into the sky, pushing apart cold air pockets, and traps all life surrounding it. It stills all things and commands respect. A girl who is in the midst of realizing that she is seen as a  _ girl  _ is no different. She, too, is fed by the input of sharp jabs, mostly aimed toward her appearance, the apparently brittle bones covered by sheets of skin that look the same as the boy’s next door. She will shudder, she will retreat; sometimes, it is not worth chasing him all over the playground just to retrieve the modest bouquet of flowers she picked ten minutes earlier. Her mother will have to settle for a few shapely rocks found in the field that day. Kairi’s purple flowers, long trampled, rest on concrete, on top of the painted map of Destiny Islands. She wonders, then, when she will stop feeling the queasy feeling on Sora’s approach. Fourth grade, she decides, will be better.

After a particularly clumsy fall from the monkey bars, Kairi’s hands are all blisters and searing and god, it feels like a hot knife to the hand. She’s sitting in forlorn silence, nursing her hands back to health by blowing on them, willing the pain away. And then she sees Sora rushing over to her, and the feeling returns. He has a frightened look on his face. His floppy shoes kick up sand around her ankles, and he’s shouting suddenly: “Kairi, Kairi, your hands! Here!” And from his bottle pours lukewarm water that feels like lava onto her hands, and she’s enraged, crying, the pain exacerbated and shooting spears throughout her body. Sora’s trying to calm her now, ensures that the pain will “stop soon,” and she needs to calm down; but he doesn’t get it, none of them ever do, and she pushes him with all of her might across the sand and he falls right into the wood chip pile, and he is splintered by some act of god. He cries, wails loudly, for some pathetic splinter in his thumb; and his eyes are red and watery, and the feeling leaves her stomach, instead siphoning into her stinging hands. She brings her hands to her mouth, licks at the blisters, and walks to the nurse’s office. 


	20. Waltz of the damned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rose garden, the rose-colored lens, that usually fools you, and the critical moments of “before now.” Akuroku.

Waltz of the damned

* * *

 

The tea was too hot; we saw in an awkward lull as the steam floated up, the leafy moisture slicking our faces. When I asked Kairi how her week had been, she focused on me with a stare bordering contemplation and boredom.

“It was fine,” she sipped her tea. “How was yours?”

I understood her agitation, I realized, when she asked me the same question. “Good. Just worked, worked out. Didn’t save any lives this week,”

“Yeah. Hey, there’s this salsa festival on Saturday. I was thinking we could go, but no pressure.” She swirled her hand on mine. I felt my eyes flatline. A certain staleness pierced the air.

“Salsa isn’t really my thing,” I said unremarkably.

She was so beautiful, I recognized that much. In the months prior, things had been a whirlwind -- from the late-night trips across the bay to the headboard-breaking sex, the first breaths of life with Kairi inspired me. Made me want to reevaluate everything. She commanded my attention. Even now, as I stared at her peach-colored lips, moving and forming words, I could look nowhere else; yet that initial force of a wild dream, the force of something ungodly and disastrous, had left my body completely.

“I think,” I interrupted her. She gazed back at me, sipping gingerly at her tea, lips puckering gratuitously, “I think I’m gonna go.” I felt for my keys.

“What?” Her girlish squeak, that instant disappointment. I felt bad for Kairi. I imagined what she thought was momentum between us and frowned, stirring my tea listlessly. Hungover college students paraded in the cafe, as if an ethereal comment on the banality of this bond between us, the duo of Kairi and Axel. 

“What do you mean?” There it was again, and I could easily see what she had hoped for with us, though in a way so secretive that, now coming to the surface, made her blood vessels betray her forced casualness. She was twenty-four, a kid, whose family only lived forty minutes away. She probably wanted the obvious physical materiality of a relationship going well: a month-to-month apartment in the gentrifying area of a shitty part of the city, cheap scented candles on every window ledge, Clorox wipes and Listerine, a walk-in closet, a queen-sized bed for the both of us. 

“Listen,” I said, a sudden parental tone to my voice, entirely unearned. “Things just aren’t as strong as they were before. I think,” I paused for an emphatic look in her green green eyes, “I think we should stop seeing each other. My heart’s just not in it anymore.” 

“Interesting,” she responded, sitting coolly in the rickety cafe chair. “I actually thought things were going well.” She looked up at me with her eyes only, and I felt anger rise in my stomach -- fast, too fast -- because, what the fuck, was she trying to seduce me into staying with her? Did she do that intentionally?

“Okay, well, I don’t. I just don’t,” I said it again when I saw a flash of confusion stampede onto her face. 

“Alright, well, you are your own person. We all have our vices,” she shrugged nonchalantly.

I wanted to argue about her word choices, ask her what the fuck that meant, and how it related, but the surge of anger evaporated. I slumped forward, stressed out. “Okay, Kairi. You are right.” I grabbed my wallet from the corner of the table and pulled my jeans up. 

“Can you call me later?”

“What?” And this is where the grudges begin, I noticed. “Why would I call you?”

“To talk about everything.”

I balked.

“Besides, I thought we could talk in private about -- you know…”

“Kairi, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Axel,” she clenched her jaw, “why are you acting so confused? We’re  _ dating,  _ for god’s sake,”

“Yeah,  _ dating.  _ I’m not your boyfriend.” I knew I should care more but her audacity and newfound manipulation pissed me off. What was it about these idiotic twenty-something-year-olds that made them absolutely horrendous at communication?

“We’ve been serious for a little while,” she trailed off, took another sip of tea. “It’s normal for me to want the things I want.” By the way she kept insisting and hinting at this vague nothingness, I grew increasingly nervous. Fuck.

“What,” I forced myself to be calm, “are you talking about.”

“... Moving in together,” she open-mouth gazed at me, saying nothing, waiting. Waiting. I shook my head and walked out of the cafe. Once in my car, I sent her one last text:  _ I think we should stop seeing each other.  _

I felt bad for her. I really did. My thoughts swirled around until I became overwhelmed by the complete degradation of the human species: one date gone wrong and you suddenly can’t comprehend how millions of years of evolution spat out that god-awful situation. I sighed. Having never been treated, well,  _ kindly,  _ by dating partners has made her delusional; no critical thinking beyond textbooks made her immature, ruined all of her intrigue and humor and beauty. I felt embarrassed by the exposure of my effort in trying to make the past few weeks seem normal. We went to dinner on Tuesday night, and it was magnificently boring. She wore a sequined dress that did nothing for me; we fucked in a quiet, missionary silence, and she came, then I came, and then I drove home, got ready for bed and tucked myself in my sheets before midnight. On a particularly wild excursion, I took her to a nearby rose garden where we popped open sparkling rose and got punch drunk, feeding each other broken bits of shortbread and strawberries. I remember how her skin drank in the sun, made her whole body feel like magma against mine, and she rolled over onto her side to gaze over the undulating hills. They seemed to go on for miles, their long grasses rippling in the wind. In my purpled vision, I stared at the back of her head for at least ten minutes -- staring, staring -- and I felt everything leave me in one sigh.

After a while of driving nowhere, I pulled over. Around me were a bunch of average-looking, tan-colored buildings. A disarticulated strip mall. Civics everywhere and even a single-serving bottle of vodka on the curb. I peeled out of the parking lot and back onto the freeway, that feeling of growing dread, usually after a sort-of breakup, becoming heavier in my chest by the second. There was a particularly close-call at a yellow and I white-knuckled the fuck out of my steering wheel and erupted. Tears, sighs, agony. Even a sort-of breakup held a knife to my throat. 

It was about an hour later, after gas-wasting circuitous routes and an almost-ran red light later, that I finally went into this ritzy place called Cafe V. I wanted to be brought free wine sampler flights, to use linen napkins, espresso. An inexperienced but confident young woman brought me cucumber water, told me that my server would be with me shortly. 

It was mostly about the motions. I tore through my salmon bruschetta with abandon and slurped my respectable cup of pumpkin-apple bisque in mere seconds. The scheurebe was delicious. At some point, the server paused -- wrong move, I thought, but they pursed their politician lips as quickly as they had hanged agape. He scurried off and brought me a new glass with my main dish - black cod - and asked if I needed anything else, so I looked up and it was weird. See, I couldn’t believe it was him. I heard the clatter of my fork before realizing that it had been me to let it fall.

“... Sorry,” I whispered. “Sorry, sorry,” I kept shaking my head and darted my hand to the bench, or the floor, or wherever.

He was quicker than me though. “Please,” he picked up my fork. “This is my job.”

“You’re not…” I stopped myself. It had been a long, long time. At least fifteen years. I stammered. “I might be wrong, but did you used to live off Oakbury? Like in LA?”

He smiled through clenched teeth. “Well, sir,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “I can’t talk personal at work.” He nodded and muttered something about getting me new silverware and ran off. I swiveled in my seat, watching him go to the kitchen. 


	21. Being in love with you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am in vacation in Maine. The stories will come out more slowly. I may have to reconfigure my long-term goal, meh. 
> 
> Notes: Being in love with you. Terra and Aqua. Aqua’s POV.

I stared as I saw you arch your back, legs taut and anticipatory as you waited for the gunshot to start the race. Your legs, thickly carved with muscle, shot forward. You were unlike the other runners. They paraded around the track as if this were a game, propelling their chests forward as if it would transform them into a quicker beast. You had a cunning face, still round, but your skin formed well around the spindly poking of your bones. Slipping ahead of the crowd of runners, your legs looked like a gazelle’s, and in a short twenty-five seconds, you were the first to cross the finish line. Your parents rushed down after the event, dazzled by your victory. You shook your hands in celebration, jumping in your own delight. In my solitude, I crunched on another cashew, willing away the normalcy of bad breath, wishing I could congratulate you. Instead, I was spellbound.

Later on, we were sprawled on a wooden bench, overlooking the sea, and even after all of the time we had spent with your lips between mine, I still shivered. The air smelled like San Francisco and it was as if the sun erupted in my chest. My heart, then, oozed and dripped. I wanted only you. You spoke to me as if seasons were pages in a book. After the sun went down, we went back into the house, where I told you how my body needed to be loved. Unyieldingly, you obliged, and I quaked with trembling legs wrapped around you.

Before I knew how to treat you, how to touch and caress and listen to you, I watched you. Weak. Subtle. Untrying. On the beach, the sand flying from beneath your feet, you grabbed my hand and we careened into the surf, the breath of mermaids. There was seaglass lying atop the sand. I collected a handful of amber-colored stones for you, and even now, am surprised I had the gall to give them to you. I met your eyes quickly, almost guiltily, and looked away. I was sure that my face was flushed. From that moment forward, my hands felt heavy. Around you, my every expression, every swallow, every blink, swam into my acute awareness. Later, later and later, you quelled my anxiety. You placed your velvet-soft hand against mine, cracked and dry, and electricity shot through me, and I was sure that I could hear your heart beating in my ears, else what could have been those billions of circuits of light pulsing through me? Nothing else, I remember thinking, nothing else. It was floating. It was flying. Daisies and leaves and morning oatmeal, melted butter and dinners with your sisters and cousins; it was the peak of Kilimanjaro, fuchsia sunsets and slumping our heads against warm sand, drunk from mezcal. Then it was midnight, black skies and broken debris we wanted to believe as stars, plummeting in a tragic martyrdom; in between, however, it was always laughter. Your radiant warmth. Restful nights. 

I hear the piano. The birds. The cars driving by. Was that you, I sometimes think. In the mirror, I still think I see your face. Shiny brown hair. A shy and welcoming smile. At nighttime, your hands still hold mine under the sheets. Perhaps it is a golden memory, placated by my fondness: we’re looking at the seagull as it scuttles along the shore, struggling to carry purple figs in its mouth. It squawks. Then it drops its precious fig, glimmering and ruby-colored, and flies far, so far, away. I grab your hand, continue outlining your fingers with the thumb-sized shells I picked up from earlier. It’s salty. The air sticks to our faces. You leaned in and kissed me, desperate and forceful, as if we would be swallowed up by the watery womb licking at our feet. 

What was that coastline? I can’t quite remember now. (I miss you.) So much time has passed since then. 


	22. The god-seeking man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this? I can't tell you for certain. 
> 
> Namine/Riku. Riku's POV.

The N Judah Outbound train used to take me straight to her house, Namine Undunas. She lived in the Sunset District, where it was all balmy all the time. There were roommates, too; insignificant, mostly, who insisted that they became more Chinese every day. They bought pairs of tickets to Beijing twice a year and always refunded them. It had to do with dragon bones and oracle-reading, they told Namine; becoming Chinese was an infection, they insisted, as they grimly noticed a developing habit of her preparing pork dumplings more and more often in the breathy morning fog. Namine ate with black chopsticks. Stuffed the dumplings in her mouth, childlike and greedy, buzzed from watered-down wine and morning sake. She ate loudly, slurping up the meat juices, spilling sesame oil and red chili flakes on her plate as if it were a palette.

Twilight Town’s public transportation boasted nothing more than ten trains, all going either way, and it still failed to pacify my nervousness. I wondered then, and I wonder now, what were those stones in the front of her yard? I wanted to ask then, clambering up her impressively steep driveway, but the distant sight of the legendary painted staircases captured my attention instead. A gust swirled through my hair, and I felt frost coming on, but all I cared about were those stairs. Floating, they seemed, at the edge of my vision, their rubies and emeralds and glass tiles twinkling.

I had no idea how to use public transportation in the far side of Twilight Town. By some miracle, my neighbor was heading to an area similar to mine that day, so he offered to ride the train with me. We talked in a comfortable murmur. Something-something _adventure_ , something-something _outbound._ I was almost certain he thought I was dreadfully simple. He regarded me well enough, nodding and pausing in all of the correct places, smiling with an orange blossom cheerfulness. And when he left, he asked me no less than four times if I knew which stop to get off -- _yes_ \-- and he gave me his cell, just in case I managed to get lost. The minute my train departed without him, I felt a sense of liberation flood my body. A yearning, perhaps. Yearning for solitude. Or maybe it was his departure that marked another critical step en route to Namine.

The lights of the Sunset District passed by in a dreamy mistiness. Frothy espresso, warm baguettes, bitter hot chocolates. Macintosh repair centers. Emerging tattoo artists hanging rickety signs as proof of their existence, some of them wearing gold hoop earrings. Salt and fish markets. Crab claws and old women, some Asian and some white, walked slowly, carrying neatly-folded brown paper bags. Oysters must be delicious here. I wanted hundreds of them spread out on cold, coarsely-ground salt, quivering beneath my tongue and exploding their briny creaminess in my mouth. The spiny shell, the ripping of muscle. I wanted to add spiciness, for the sea to bite me back.

I waddled up to Namine’s house from Sunset Boulevard, the mustiness of the N Judah train long-forgotten now as I drank in the fresh ocean air. To my surprise, she was standing there. Standing softly, a hand to her head to keep the wind from blowing her hair, dressed in white. I was astonished. It had been years since we had seen each other, and the moment was now, was _now,_ god, was _now,_ and she planted her feet on one of those large gray stones, the ones I had been wondering about forever, and she gracefully extended her hand to me. _Namine,_ I said, _I have so much to tell you._

Hours flew by in the comfortable, silent warmth of her softly-lit kitchen. Hard cheeses and breads littered the table, green grapes and shredded carrots, peppers and garlic hummus. I couldn’t stop telling her things: this and this and this, I said, in between the brie and viscous laughter. This and this and this. It bubbled like a freshwater spring from my throat, and her smile warmed my chest in that frightening, awe-inspiring way. She told me her stories, too; but I could see her vivacity in her hands, the quick snap of her wrists. Flinging the clam sauce this way, sponging the hoisin glaze with barbecue beef. Her mouth latched onto each dish gratuitously, peach lips to powder-white mochi.

“Riku,” she said at last, sliding into my body, her eyes never breaking my gaze, “hello again.”

I dropped my shrimp dumpling with a loud clatter, wrapped my sticky hands around her thighs and kissed her with the force of a thousand suns, indifferent to the sticky plum sauce smearing across my cheeks. Sugar-sweet and dark brown. Undiluted. Pasty and glutinous. In between the past six years and now, I can’t say for certain what I have been doing.


	23. Fake love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'm upset" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and here is how I see it from the point of view of Axel with an emotionally absent family.

Fake love

* * *

 

When Axel was upset, he wanted to throw things. He was refined, though, knew when to stop and how to quell harmful thoughts. He had a father with a face of stone. He preferred shitty, fire-in-your-throat whisky and underage girls, which probably explains why his mother never let him sleep in the master bedroom. His parents took him to cotillion, made him wear starchy shirts and use salad forks and dessert spoons. In the slips of his mind, however, the creaky chinks through which no light entered (and none left), he had  _ desires.  _ Had hunger. Desire for mischief, an explosive anger that whittled away the marble of conventional life. Princeton rejected him, leaving him with Dartmouth as his only alternative. After stumbling home from an alcohol-filled night, a sloppy blowjob behind the oleanders, and a badly-bruised shoulder, he opened the front door to his home and saw it all: facades, a clipped silence, smug smiles from aunts and uncles and barely-disguised disappointment written all over the faces of his parents. He saw the pursed lips, horizontal frowns, sighs, nods of a barely-there approval. Dartmouth it would be, son. 

The time his high school girlfriend dumped him, he felt the gaping hole inside his chest again, throbbing, probably indicative of some type of internal bleeding or an early death. He wanted to throw her out of his room. Wanted her to be chucked as far and as hard as possible. He wanted to see her bounce around life without him only as entertainment to himself. He wanted all of this for only for a moment. In the mundane light that sometimes creeps into his otherwise decadent life, he correctly realizes that it was jealousy he felt, when they ended things. How could she move so easily as water could? He thought of her in between sticking his fingers down his throat crouched at the base of porcelain toilet bowls. God, truth, whatever, found him in the black slivers of cracked walls, of doors left ajar. She clicks down the hall even now, past his parents’ grand piano, and forgets that he ever existed. 

A perverse fever dream, imagining all the things he could hurl across the room. In the kitchen, his eyes glazed over with fantasies. Avocados breaking the windows, glass flying everywhere. Maybe a shard would fall into the garbage disposal, would be crunched into smaller and smaller pieces. He’d slash his mother’s apron, would smash his dad’s whiskey and tequila bottles on the floor because maybe physical brokenness would help calm the anger inside. He’d pull the doors from the hinges of the refrigerator, overextend all of the drawers, kick in the centers of their wooden cabinets. In would storm his father, mother, the first time he will have seen them together in years, both of them wagging their fingers and unwrinkled faces shaking with rage. Peering into their eyes, really peering, he would expect to see the reflection of himself in theirs; but he was met with insect-like eyeballs, lifeless and vacant. 

It was the end of the fifties when it all happened. Summer, actually, if that amorphous, endless dreariness can be categorized as a season. Washing machines had stamped their ubiquity in the lives of the average, well-to-do middle-class family, and Axel’s family prided itself on its impressive array of shiny muscle cars in addition to their ownership of shiny household appliances. The people were tan and healthy, reminiscent of some utopian goal in which everyone was remotely attractive, but not garishly so. Kids all around the country were disciplined by their own vices and failures of character. Parents who had lived through hard economic times possessed a uniquely abusive mentality, usually resulting in emotionally deformed kids-turned-adults. Their own kids would regard this generation wearily, wondering with a cautious eye if their repressed parents were part plastic, part cyborg.

But this occurred only in those homes with middle-class incomes. Axel of old money was beaten with hands; of course, it was not spoken of. His mother’s neck bruises were not spoken of, the odd parade of teenage girls at nighttime was not spoken of. The scorching sidewalk against his cheek as his father kicked him in the gut again for disgracing the family name. Princeton, son.  _ Princeton.  _ Axel never threw things. He carried these memories with him. They weighed as much as a lead cross, harnessing his neck and molding his spine into a special cavity through which more heeled kicks came. 

People say he looked much older than he was. Attractive, too. A geometric face, sharp angles and shapely cheeks, gently blushed, and full lips. In between his junior and senior year at shameful Dartmouth, he returned home for a week. Unsurprisingly, what he expected to occur took place. Rolling his eyes as he heard giddy shrieks peppered with bellowing laughter, he kept his eyes glued to the newspaper. A second later, he heard stumbling, then a delicate stampede of small feet. Three girls -- what, no older than fifteen -- raced down the stairs and out the door with an astounding force, and Axel took liberty of this odd happening to tread upstairs. 

It was his father. Pale-faced, so pale, and stumbling in his bathrobe. He was backpedaling furiously, arms spinning in pathetic circles, his penis still erect and slick with gummy spit. Axel watched in breathless terror. His father started gripping his head, shaking in pain, and half of his face went slack, and as he fell backwards into the tub, he caught Axel’s eye. He cried out. Whimpered. Axel recognized what appeared to be a stroke -- a massive one, at that. The signs all checked out: loss of ipsilateral function, apparent numbness as indicated by loss of extremity function, no verbal abilities. He heard his father struggling, as if the insides of his body were fighting to burst open. His father’s hands shook with insanity: he hurled colorful soaps into the air, the gooey shampoos painting the tub in stripes of lavender, green, orange, like the sunset. Deep, animal sounds spewed from his father’s mouth, as if a vermin. Very calmly, and at a forcibly slowed pace, Axel turned on his heel. On his retreat, he passed the vanity room. There sat his mother, filing her nails and donned in only a silk robe. He opened his mouth to say something -- anything -- to her, but she silenced him with a shrug.  _ If only _ , she mouthed at him. 

Axel never threw anything when he was upset, but that night, he threw himself onto the curb, again and again, sobbing and incoherent, for hours on end until some blonde kid from the street with a hard hand slapped him into consciousness and told him to stop fucking killing himself. He had a different accent, Axel noticed, and tattered clothes. It was the fifties, when this all happened, but Axel leaned into this kid’s plain cotton t-shirt and cried anyway, bloodied and attracting the attention of strangers, feeling for the first time vitality not contingent on repression. 

“Queer ass crybaby,” the blonde kid mumbled, nonchalantly patting Axel’s heaving back. He hissed at staring strangers and told them to fuck off, mind their own business, sensing a deep, earth-shattering pain in this tall guy with red hair.


	24. The kitchen god, i

AN: It's about passing away. No shared languages. This will be published in random installments. I've been working on this specific work for about a month and a half. I apologize for the break in regularity, not that that many people keep up with this; traveling the US before graduate school fucked up my schedule a bit, but I am back on track now. 

From Michael Pollan: “In the calculus of economics, [cooking] may not always be the most efficient use of a [home] cook’s time, but in the calculus of human emotion, it is beautiful even so. For is there any practice less selfish, any labor less alienated, or any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for the people you love?”

* * *

The kitchen god, i

Another night that Axel found himself bursting out of bathroom stalls, his lips chapped and red, his last pair of good shoes finally tore. Be weary of men with unruly beards and ripped fingernails. It’ll feel like a sawtooth once inside, she used to insist. Stay away from the genteel type, you know the ones: face prettier than a porcelain doll, pressed slacks, powder-blue ties. Lips unused to kissing and cocks rubbery from disuse, untrained and too excited to please. They’ll rip your throat out. And the ones who looked like priests -- once their body leaves your body, the memory will stay with you, a ghost who still stand at the edge of your bed. 

Axel found the happy medium, the sweet spot on the street. It was the academic. The repressed professor whose red-haired wife had traveled to Spain for the month needed something other than papers quivering in his hands. He or she who paid a large sum, at least in the microcosm of dusty shelves and graduate seminars, for sex with Axel did it in secret. Obviously. Perhaps that was part of the charm inherent to the stuffy academic spaces he so often frequented. Perhaps it was the outrageous rates those with tenure would gleefully oblige to for a night spent with him. For additional fees -- not by the hour, of course, but by the service performed -- he would become an actor. A Victorian-esque gentleman married to the mores of a reticent and repressed society. He’d be a charismatic boyfriend. An elegant raconteur. Caress a hand beneath the dinner table, shaved and fresh-smelling with some watered-down lavender. 

The best work was in the city, of course. Full of misfits, neophytes, certifiably crazed psychopaths and socialites so rich it was stupid, sick and green with hubris, New York treated him well. New York fanned his efforts and exploits. Need a quick thousand to pay for rent? Hang out by the Wilmer law offices for a couple hours on a Friday night -- repressed queers, desperate to keep their status as  _ heterosexual and happily-married  _ a tight rictum, impenetrable -- will fall into your lap, begging you to slide your fingers up their ass. Heaven knows their wives’ feminine legs, their knobby breasts, just aren’t doing the trick anymore. He can’t even count, or doesn’t care to count, how many times he’s been asked to come on men’s faces. It was always a miraculous event, he thought, seeing the utter explosion of joy in their eyes, when his dick would quiver and droop before their faces. 

He was, of course, suicidal. To mar the body, day in and day out, by work only made capable by beauty, wore him out. Sure, he’d never see the lights of a lecture hall. He’d never seriously use a pen for the rest of his life. Those days of high school were over. In Axel’s case, though, he can’t quite say when the life-ruining began. There was a time in high school when, his neurological chemicals pounding him into hell, even then, he flung four desks inside of a classroom because his teacher failed to call on him to answer a question. And why, Axel, won’t you stop this insanity, don’t you know that you can be expelled? La-la-la, he’d sing, smacking the walls with his palms, kicking backpacks. La-la-la, I can’t hear you. Then there was the other time, he barely graduated high school with a 2.0, and landed what he thought to be a swanky job as line cook at a cool Portuguese joint on the Upper East Side. He was within walking distance to his heroin dealer, and within a few weeks, was getting regular blowjobs from one of the brown-eyed prep cook drones. 

They broke up, obviously. It fell into his lap, he claimed; he said some old guy approached him at a bar after a particularly harrowing Thursday shift, asked Axel if he wanted to meet him in the bathroom. Disgusted initially, Axel turned away from the man, practically scoffing. But then the man leaned in and whispered, “how about for five hundred?” In seven minutes, Axel’s entire face was smashed against the single-use stall, his vision blurry, body unused to the pendulus swing of ball sack between his legs. He was sure that his ass had been torn open, probably bleeding and shit everywhere, smearing between asscheeks and the man’s fingers who, greedily, pinched and spit and slapped roughly, in between calling Axel a slut. The man counted out five hundred in front of Axel in a low voice, going up in twenties, as if some prostituting ritual. Axel scooped up the bills ten minutes after the man left the bathroom, shaken and ass feeling like a metal rod had been stuck up his rectum, and texted his sort-of-girlfriend:  _ we’re over.  _

He preferred New York above all else because everywhere else sucked. Baltimore possessed a type of low-brow desire for cultured otherness, which Axel saw as an extension of the Southern farmboy who wanted to go to the big city to “make it,” only to run back to his papa’s farm, tail between his legs, because he was too weak to make it alone. In those lesser cities, with the marmalade-sweet Ozark rockies and the pathetic little strip malls laid out like papier-mache across slabs of hot concrete and soft asphalt, social mores give way to the astrophying of taste. Grown adults still prefer boxed macaroni to hand-pulled lo men -- not because they choose this life hardly worth living -- but because they do not know what lo mein  _ is.  _ No one does in the Appalachia country.` Axel wasn’t a little bitch like they were in the Baltimore or Chicago or Los Angeles or Houston, and secondly, anything south of New York was not worth a second thought. God forbid he actually try to do business in any of the aforementioned pig towns. He’d probably make the first Man’s Man he saw melt with one lingering stare, would feel up a pathetic boner, barely lap at the head of a penis, and be forced to swallow semen comprised of triglycerides and high fructose corn syrup. All of this needless suffering for a fraction of the profit -- no thank you. See, Axel didn’t favor escort services or sex work or prostitution or  _ whatever _ for the fuck of it; he did it because New York was an unbelievable market with rich men and insecurities so powerful they’d destroy a nation for it. And, as it turned out, they’d pay him a fortune to keep their secret. 

“You ever gunna work here full-time, man?” Riku asked, the other line cook. He was the fish guy, used to chopping gills and pulling the bloody guts out of things. He was no man for beating around the bush. 

“Thinkin’ about it,” Axel said. He sponged his forehead with a rag, the heat of the stove licking at his face. “Why?”

Riku shrugged. “Dunno. Just like you the most is all,” he continued working on the mackerel, pinching its mouth between his fingers. “New guy is weird.”

“Oh,” he shrugged, and Riku could tell that Axel couldn’t give any less of a fuck about it. Kitchen gossip. Who’s fucking who, what’s the chef doing, where is the fish order -- Axel only cared about closing and how fast he could do a line while on all fours.

“Something up with him?”

Riku grunted in confusion, mid-cut. “... What?”

“New guy. You said he’s weird,” Axel scouted his cabinet for his favorite wooden spoon, kneeling and using a small flashlight. “So is he?”

“A bit. Doesn’t talk much and looks kinda like a--a girl.”

Axel giggled and changed the heat to HIGH. “A girl, huh. Must be gay.”

“You callin’ him gay like it’s bad?”

“Obviously not. How many times have I gone on my knees for you, fish boy?”

And that was the usual flux of conversation between them. Their conversations were peppered with bits of realness and bits of fakeness and sometimes things in between, like how maybe they actually want to fuck each other after shift. Axel, reigning king of the queer scene, was almost certain that he could straight-bait Riku any day, at least when he wasn’t getting any. 

There were other moments in the kitchen, the rest of the world forgotten between the two of them, that totally and completely eclipsed all other experiences in either one’s lives. Riku was an attractive guy, an Ivy League graduate and a bit of a prick, and it made him interesting, to say the least. His taste was best met by plates prepared scrupulously, with his demi-glaces preplanned and prepared down to the gram. Often, he wouldn’t even eat mussels unless he physically  _ saw  _ the chef’s mise-en-place. He met Axel without pretense and failed to judge others’ places in life. He liked Axel for his dedication to the craft -- Axel, whorish mercenary in the kitchen, could stack impossibly-high towers of forcemeat stuffings, casseroles, even veal; he’d pour boiling stews filled with squid and fish cakes into baked dough shells for the fuck of it. (“ _ It’s art, man! Get with the fucking program! _ ”). And Riku admired it. 

It followed naturally that they built a strong bond between the drone-like work of dishing out four hundred dinners a night, both silently loathing their new broiler man who couldn’t hold a hot saucepan to save his life. Axel would mouth to Riku, “ _ cabron,” _ in times like these, and Riku would toss whatever bit of pasta at Axel. He always made a display of it, Axel,  catching whatever bits of deformed gnocchi in his mouth while emitting a loud moan of Riku’s name. Other times, Axel would fry bits of day-old pastry dough and shape it into a ball, pad it with the pastry chef’s cocoa powder, and pretend to shit right on the floor. This usually worked best with newcomers doing their stage shift; he and Riku out-bullied and out-snobbed all virgin cooks, whether they were seasoned or not. The kitchen was Riku’s and Axel’s, and everyone needed to fucking know that. 

“Eighty-six swordfish!” Riku screamed at the top of his lungs to Olette, the most senior server. She was a real whirlwind, a ball of energy and could always bail the kitchen out of mistakes by sweet-talking incensed customers with her red-lipsticked lips. But she let it go to her head. “God fucking dammit, woman! How many times do you need to be told!?” Riku slapped her ticket to the cutting board and sliced it into four neat pieces, his fingers trembling with rage. “See? No more! Eighty-fucking-six  _ swordfish!”  _

Olette rolled her eyes at him, coolly brushing him off. She was the only one who would dare. “Then do the special.”

“No ticket, no food!” Axel yelled. A look of mischief spread across his face.

“Go fuck yourself,” she responded. The special was out in under eight minutes, Riku cussing up a storm and sponging his face with rag after rag, muttering about the god damn incompetent servers. He put some English in it, spun the oval plate right into Olette’s hands. She later thanked him, her lips sliding in and around his mouth, saliva gathering at their chins. Axel listened hungrily, his ear pressed up to utility closet’s door. He slipped his hand down his sweated-through work pants in a spiritual state, wondering when on earth he would give and receive that type of pleasure. Axel, bone broth enthusiast and top-tier escort, hadn’t had time for a boyfriend in three years.

In this case, the ghost was anything that even slightly resembled hope for a ‘normal life.’ He had given it up, the ghost. In fact, he had given up any and all forms of ghostliness: no holy ghost, no inner demons, no crude excuse of a conscience. A godless person, floating from kitchen to kitchen, scraping cum from his shoes and plain t-shirts, Axel worked weekends either slamming out dinners or fucking men with the thinnest condoms he could find. 

But today was Tuesday, and the chef hadn’t take off their usual Monday, and it was raining bloody-fucking-murder, and for whatever fucking reason, tourists yet  _ insisted  _ on meandering into their dining room, slick with thick rain droplets and cheap ponchos. The air had swelled with an incredible warmth, and both Axel’s and Riku’s armpits were pungent. Perfumed and strong with sour and stale body odor. 

“Fuck this,” Axel gritted his teeth. Sweat poured down his face and clouded his vision. Chef had just yelled at him for the third time this shift, and it was only half past five. Riku didn’t bother to look up from his saucepan until he heard Axel’s shoes squeak.

“Not fucking today. I can’t deal with this today.” He threw his rag to the floor and marched toward Chef, who was wedged between the sanitizing sinks and broom closet.

“No no no no -- I said to do this  _ yesterday _ , motherfucker, not today!” Chef had murder in his eyes as he yelled at the dishwasher, a faint blush on his cheeks. He saw Axel making his way toward the exit and exploded. “Where the  _ fuck  _ do you think you’re going, Mister-fucking-Hartt?!”

Axel halted. Then he had a look appear in his eye. “Where do I think I’m going? How about to last fucking Monday, where you were supposed to have taken your day off but refused to do so? How about before the shift, before you thought you could fuck me in the ass in front of everyone here?” He sucked in air through his nostrils, feeling brave, knowing that he was indispensable to Chef. “I work my fucking ass off for you, homie, every hour you want, and I keep my fucking mouth shut, and you still treat me like I’m some new guy?” He rolled his eyes, his mouth frothing, “I don’t think so, Chef!”

Chef opened his mouth to shout, and Axel was ready for it -- prepared to hear the worst of it, how his mother was a whore and his father a woman-beater, how he was a dick-sucking slut with nothing else besides the restaurant -- but Chef slowly closed it. Crimini mushrooms flew through the air and demi-glaces evaporated, reducing each second, and the entirety of the animated kitchen froze. 

“Be back tomorrow.” He nodded at Axel. Then, a desperate attempt: “Axel--” he grabbed the redhead’s elbow. “I’m not -- I’m not losing you, am I?”

Axel shook his head. “No, Chef.” 

No, Chef -- No, Chef. He needed the money. He needed it more than he could even imagine. Between the rent and the girls and the boys and cocaine skyrocketing to two-hundred a gram, Axel would sooner throw himself from the Empire State Building than lose his gig with Chef Strife and Riku, Ivy-League prick whose pornographic lips pushed Axel over the edge. 

He had no idea who he was. Even now, as he looks back, in between twirling his boyfriend’s blonde hair and threading his fingers through that lovely bundle of strands, he cannot recall the emotional justification of that time in his life. Rationally, he sought out and executed what was required of him: money to make ends meet. Lines of coke from the tiles of the just-sanitized kitchen floor, crouching on all fours, slurping up that powdery glory -- was  _ that  _ necessary? While these memories tug at him, they too elicit (forcibly) some of his most vulnerable images of childhood -- balmy nights in citrusy California, bright watermelons eaten poolside, Mario Party in his cousin’s dappled sunlit room -- and he’s rendered speechless. He’s convinced that the decadent days must have existed to accommodate his spirit as it is now, the ultimate juxtaposition. His boyfriend rises up from their couch.

“I ate the plums earlier,” his boyfriend confesses shyly. “They were just so sweet... I can use nectarines instead for the burgers.” His hands linger in Axel’s for another moment, and Axel melts into his touch. 

He hadn’t had a Tuesday off in months. The rain prevented him from venturing to the tourists traps, though ruefully inundated by hot out-of-towners, that were the gardens of the park. Go figure. Slumping his way to the nearest bus stop, he saw New York: lone poles, uneven sidewalks, discarded plastics -- all covered in shit. He sneered and jangled the keys in his pocket. But then he smelled it.  _ Chow mein. _

The plate steamed into his face like something perverse; the black bean sauce-covered noodles glistened, showing off for his famished gaze. With mild abandon, he twirled mouthful after mouthful of the thick, stringy goodness into his mouth; his feet ached in a deep, spinal pain; truffle salt pasted itself onto his neck from his earlier encounter with Chef; he soaked in the onslaught of pleasure brought on by the chow mein, its carbohydrates gratuitously activating his insulin something erratic. 

Carrying a to-go container of yet another order of the same dish, he stood outside of the restaurant, dodging the rain to little avail. And, as it happens, he spotted some Clueless-Looking Guy chatting away into his phone, narrowly avoiding collision with vehicles. Axel looked more closely. Blonde kid. Shortish. An assured gaze, so not a tourist. A bit squirrely, though, as if the place were new to him. Axel sneered. Some college student. Either an NYU bum fuck, a CUNY underachiever, or a Columbia pissbaby.

Suddenly a car came to a screeching halt. It paused for a moment, enough for the blonde kid to squeal and leap away from the vehicle, then physically recoil as the car let out a ten-second horn blare. 


	25. computing inferiority and mathematically proving why you should hate yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some situations that make me feel inferior. They usually involve ordinariness; things that are so openly, proudly, unmistakably mundane, in that spiritually void and unforgivable way, that show me, with cruel brazen, my complicity in mediocrity. 
> 
> I've been toying with this piece for ages. I sincerely apologize for my lack of updating -- still getting used to the flow and swing of graduate school, and as the dust settles, I am finding where and when I can write for this project. In any case, this piece has been eating at me for some reason, and today, I scrapped most of it and arrived exactly where I needed to.

Computing inferiority and mathematically proving why you should hate yourself

* * *

 

Axel’s hand is shaking again as he picks up his glass, counting for the sixth time the number of blondes in the cafe. The one with tiny ringlets; the group of four, bobbing their heads and practically bouncing out of their chairs; and the last blonde, sitting in a quiet corner, legs draped over the armrest and Bose headphones clinging to his ears. You have work to do, remember? He clutches his temples, curling over his tiny, two-person table. No, I don’t. Not anymore, he reminds himself, the frantic fluttering of anxiety bouncing in his chest. It’s about Hermione _again,_ but the careful Shakespearean nuance has been lost on him; perhaps it was the pink moistness that was Saix’s mouth when it was on _his_ mouth _,_ or the acidic stream of Bacardi slipping down his throat that was his sophomore year, because he can’t quite remember who she was anyway, _Hermione,_ and why the fuck a bear appears on stage. And no way, not a chance, that he would reread the entirety of _A Winter’s Tale._ He had finished his final exams the day prior. The one short-answer question that really fucked him was this on Hermione: the revitalized statue. He left the exam in a huff, burst through the granite doors onto the green esplanade, sunlight smothering his face and everywhere else, and screamed.

His hand keeps shaking, despite the fact that he drank at least two liters of water after chugging the his triple espresso around 7 A.M. The person next to him is licking sriracha from their fingers. Their name is Ken, Axel thinks, and he came in earlier for a BLTA on focaccia. Ordered a green iced tea, too, and what was the point of that; Axel scoffs, surprised and astounded to find an email from Gradescope in his inbox. _ENG 117: UNREAD._

It is three seconds later and his jacket hangs over his bench in the cafe as he paces outside, fuming into his cell phone. “Demyx,” he breathes, voice tight, “I’m finally fucking _done_ for the semester, and really, thank fucking god,”

“Congrats, man. Weird semester,” and Axel inwardly sighs, as if Demyx’s words of veneration were spoken to hurt, rather than help, him.

“Ha, yeah, if you can even say that. If you can count being harassed and stalked by your ex on campus as ‘rough,’ then by all means, keep saying it like that,” he speaks through clenched teeth.

Not a stranger to Axel’s biting jibes, Demyx lowers his voice. Softer, more pleasant, open. “You know what I mean.”

* * *

 

Blonde Guy is still shaking him, getting spit everywhere, and somewhere in the fiasco, starts to sob. Not four minutes earlier, the cafe had been peaceful: whirring espresso machines and the chopping of herbs on wooden cutting boards made for pleasant white noise. In this mix, though, someone dressed in white left the cafe in a hurry, and suddenly Blonde Guy pounced out of his place in line and  _charged_ after the white-clad person. Blonde Guy tackled him, roughly, to the ground, and ripped an expensive-looking laptop from his hands, but the madness didn't stop there. The guy in white struggled to break free of Blonde's grip, but Blonde started  _swinging,_ yelling, spitting. People on the street were visibly shocked, and Axel took it on himself -- as a 6'5" guy -- to run outside and break up the fight. 

Axel hears the Blonde saying something aggressive, along the lines of "you dumb motherfucker" and "fuck with me," and he rips him off the computer thief, who hops to his feet and bolts in all of one instant. Axel, hand still gripping the Blonde Guy's shirt, mutters a deserved  _holy shit_ and then the guy picks up his laptop and freezes. Axel goads him back into the cafe, says that he'll buy him a latte, and moves his backpack to make room for him. 

The guy refuses to speak. He sits in his wicker chair across from Axel, eyes downcast, arms wrapped possessively around the computer. He still hasn't touched his $6 latte. With slight annoyance, Axel realizes that he is pouting. Ruby lips puckered and shiny with spit. A deep crease in his eyebrows. It is now, in this awful silence, that Axel brings up _A Winter’s Tale_ , wondering why it is suddenly so important to him. The Blonde Guy perks up when Axel mentions the bear, and Axel senses this is a good thing, though he still can't figure out why he's talking about Shakespeare. Indicative of a break in psyche, maybe; it is white noise against the incomprehensible normalcy of the peaceful cafe, cruelly juxtaposed with an almost-theft and almost-invasion just outside of its windows. Margins speak, Axel thinks, replaying that encounter over and over in his head.

And in the middle of his mindless jabber, his mind begins to wander, and he’s thinking of his brother, Reno, again, and Reno's pathetic Pay-As-You-Go phone from the grocery store. Reno and his baseball hats, the white crust of sweat slithering around their bases, bought second-hand and his duct-taped vans, no longer a teenage symbol of punk rock edginess. (Roxas loosens his grip on the laptop, staring deeply at Axel with a mix of awe and confusion as Axel spurts out fact after fact about Shakespeare, the Playwright.) Had Reno ever had something not already passed through years of use, of multiple hands? Reno and his long, silky, fire-red hair, had never known privacy. Axel’s stomach lurches. Another memory pops up, this time of his mother’s ashen face following a ten-hour workday -- “I’ll do anything for my kids,” she used to say, wearing nothing but Kirkland-brand clothing and bathing in off-brand Dial soap. Skin prickled by years of dryness, her age inched onto her body, pulled at the lower corners of her lips and accumulated at her hips, made itself obvious in the sheer number of hours it now required for her to lose an inch on the waist -- an ideology to which Axel stood in vocal opposition. It used to be easy for her, Axel thinks now and has always thought. One stomach bump and then another, and your entire life slips right through your fingers. (Dad “works across the country.”)

“So thanks, I guess,”

Axel snaps out of his stupor. “Uh," he blinks a few times. "Y-you’re welcome.” He gulps. He gazes at Blonde Guy, wondering how on earth he landed in this position. “Are you good?”

He scoffs and wipes at his eyes. “Yeah I guess. Weird,” he offers a small grin, embarrassed all the same. "I'm Roxas. This here," he motions to his laptop, "is basically the only thing that makes my life worth living."

Axel teases him. “You must really like your laptop or something." 

“Don’t even get me started on that machine. It has a Xeon core and 32 gigs of RAM,” his face lights up, passion filling the corners of his face and pulling back the years of anguish from his eyes, his mouth.

"Yeah? What's a Xeon core?" Axel asks, feeling his muscles relax. Roxas' eyes grow huge and he launches into an impassioned litany of computer hardware.

It is fitting, Axel thinks, that love for things can erase, or at least mitigate, cognitive rupture. It’s not even about love for things, but for what the thing inspires inside of the mind, the heart. Roxas, tech geek, would sooner lose his left foot than his prized, self-built laptop. And it’s in the middle of listening to Roxas, this weird blonde kid, that Axel realizes that, yes, he, himself, can also let the ever-obvious ‘now’ transform and redefine his memories of that which was painful, cutting, and so, so deep. (Reno might not have brand-new clothes and might have cheap, disposable phones. But he drives his dream car, ministers to dying patients at hospices, and has coffee with his mother every Sunday. Before he leaves, he takes her hands into his hands, kisses her fingertips and tells her that she is the sun.)


	26. A study in groupthink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was completely bored by the idea of groupthink -- we get it, social pressure erases reason -- but then I paired it with something that I am already at-odds with, and then this thing just flowed out of me. Axel's POV.

A study in groupthink

* * *

 

I told you last night that I might be gone when you wake in the morning, and you said, Why, and I said, I will be preaching, and you said, What does that mean, and I said, It means I have to think through some things, On My Own, I added when I saw you swing your feet from under the blankets. You put your hand over my heart, and you said, I love you, as if that settled it. I wanted to tell you that it wasn’t a matter of whispering to me in the dark romance of nighttime, and it would not be -- it would not be a wonderful thing, not like the one that you imagined it would be. And then you said again, I will look for you in the afternoon, and I pulled back, then you said, Stop laughing! as if that too would stop the anxious flame from singing my insides. You stayed sitting, even as I glided to the door, and you gave me a look that I had never seen on anyone’s face except yours after I kissed your eyelids the morning after we first slept together. You wanted only me, and I faltered a smile. You would soon give that to other people, and inside of my mind, I could not reconcile my own love so holy that I would light it only once in my life if necessary, with your own flame, so easily lit.

The walk had been long and cold, and it was mostly uneventful, save for dappled sunlight streaming in from the clouds. The doctor had told me that it was incurable, this aberration about me, and I didn’t have the heart to share the news. Perhaps because I was struck too hard, a hammer to a piano string and I had been zipped right up, no light in and none out, that I refused to speak. Like a proper medical practitioner, her assessment prompted me to think, wonder, acquire, hate, and trivialize. In the long grass and the mud, I could only think of brevity, of long towels on the beach, the curious speck of human skin against the ocean. When I was in the desert, I used to crouch beside cacti, poking in between their thorns, searching for tender Saguaro meat and any sign of vitality. They say for each arm a Saguaro has, it has lived for fifty years.

You talk to me in this sort of chattering, convoluted way, and your voice is broken up by the patter of rain on your windows. Tea is being made in my mind, and I want to sit here and sip it with you. But this aberration, you see, has changed me. I look back at the length of time that I could have been truly participating in the depth of human love, and I feel myself choke. I want to drink this dark tea with you, make bubbles with milk in my mouth, drunk on silliness and joy, but doing that would require that I unpurse my lips and let spill forth the entire universe from my tongue. I wonder why I let it occur. I said, I am skeptical of this, and you said, Think of it as radical love. You touched my cheek and said, Humans don’t own each other. And I said, Okay, but I don’t want to know any of it. The next morning I found my body in the arms of someone else, my legs aching in a giddy delight of having found sensible pleasure from the fingertips of another. When you saw me coming, the talking stopped, but I knew there was talk of ‘the others,’ the forbidden other from which I desired nothing. But for someone with a terminal illness, one knows that they are not immortal. They say if you think you have twenty more years to live, you behave as if immortal. I am not.

You and I understand death differently, I remember thinking. It was the first time that I had looked at you and thought, Fifty-fifty we fall in love. In between sips of my sweet latte, you had glowing eyes. You said, Life is long, and health is in our control. I bit the inside of my lip, and said, If we get to old age, it will be a miracle. You see, humans die every single day. I let the world tug at my lips, and said, Even the things we think we control, we don’t. We could suffer a stroke for a godless reason, and our life would end all the same. You shook your head, cocky and unaware that living is a hypothetical for more than half of the world, and said, We are blessed to not live in a poor country. For us, life is long. Life can be whatever we want.

My sisters are much older than me, by a decade at least, and they wish for my health. It’s the strangest thing in the world to be in this stage of life, to be internally disintegrating and the only individuals in the world who know are my doctor and me. Nobody knows, I remind myself, when I fall on the sidewalk I take every day to work.

I will be swept from the Earth in a few short months. I never thought that I was immortal, even when I was eight. I read Camus when I was sixteen and meditated for three years after it. A blooming lotus, I reentered the world of the living, my palms facing the sun, and began living how I ought to have. Each moment could be my last. This morning’s sunrise may be my last. I may never taste the honey-sweet of a warm beignet after this one, I would think, allowing myself to savor each powdery bite. 

You sit beside me on the couch, and slide an arm around my waist. I can only think of who you want to also touch like this even though I love you. The life in which I would find comfort in that human touch resides in another body. It is not this body, I think, removing myself from the couch, your grasp. It used to be second nature, to approach life as if I were promised another precious moment beneath the honest moon. These last moments are here, I think to myself, picking up my belongings from your desk. You have a look of panic, and you said, Where are you going? I give you a look that you’ve never seen.

I say, You should be grateful to love and be loved by me. I turn my back to you and say, I became blinded by our friends. They said, This is what radical love is. And I believed them. I wanted to love radically, I wanted to show you the sincerity of my love, my commitment to the purpose of loving. You say, Our friends say it works for them, and they are very satisfied. There is no jealousy or sadness because it is open with every one of them. I say, This kind of living isn’t for me. I am walking and nearly to my vehicle when you run to me, grab my hands and kiss my hands, tears in your eyes. You are hurting and weak. I am dying. You ask, Is this why you were preaching? You are crying profusely. A lot of malice fills the air, and I dread suddenly my own words. I am embarrassed that I allowed a four-hour dinner with six other couples redefine my conception of loving-with. Toss a little brandy into the mouths of slaves to fortune, and it is suddenly a matter of sleeping-with and orgasming-with, and suddenly, I am drinking in the silky liquid, and you do too, a shadowy look of lust sweeping across your face. My legs and other legs can now wrap around you. I see this look in my memories, or maybe I am ornamenting the past with my iteration of the present. I have no desire to tell you that I will die in two months.

I will be gone in the morning and the mornings following, I said. You said, Is it because everything changed, and I said, Yes. I paused then said, We never wanted this. We just accepted it and became blind. I said, for the last time, I love you, but it will change nothing. You looked at me, deeply, as if your love could settle it. The waves are lapping on the sand, and it’s a beautiful soft sound. But I don’t hear the ocean anymore. I hear your low voice in someone else’s ear as you bring them to orgasm, and I hear their shaky voice and pitted breaths, and I regret to find warmth in the same blankets. I do hope, at least, these next two months will see me at my prime: loving so fiercely that a golden-haired Jesus Christ himself will descend from his stone tower, admiring such a heart beating against its cage and raging against the dying of the light. 


	27. Sugar-bug, act i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be 3-4 installments of this piece. I don't quite know how we're going to be presented with the neatly-wrapped final piece, and that's the fun of it. I'm really into the concept of denying the miracle, especially when the beholder understands it as miraculous. Good stuff...

Sugar-bug, act i

* * *

 

A soft afternoon sun stretched across the valley. If Roxas were to scribble out how his mornings began, he would start with a cup of black tea, sweetened with milk, include the bit about his water-colored curtains and diffuse sunlight, and focus on the pasty texture of peanut butter on his dry tongue. But these are the images. If he were to inventory his morning thoughts, they would be uniquely and singularly focused on Axel. Axel’s guttural laughs and crescent-shaped eyes which, when Roxas gazed at them for too long, bounced with mischief the depravity of the entire universe. Eyelashes like gyrating pillars, underlying the dirt foundations of this spherical world, Axel’s humor contained in it the entire grasp of life, itself: it was something so contrived by the culmination of intersecting histories, and oozed of a nostalgic, carefree giggle, yet inspired in Roxas the desire to keep listening to his laugh. This is a very long way to tell you that, when Roxas thought of Axel, he became absolutely certain that, in this iteration of life, he would only ever love Axel with this burst of selflessness and jubilance. In Axel there was the divine and sacred otherness to which Roxas gave parts of his self -- agony, joy, humor, intention -- to Axel’s altar as a votive.

* * *

 

They met in Williamsburg. It was a party. Roxas walked into the mysterious penthouse apartment, the owner some friend of Hayner whose actual name was of apocryphal origin. These parties, the post-undergraduate, pre-professional gatherings tended to be like this -- hosted by some rich actuary friend who had no name but evidently good taste in mid-century modern decor… And a penchant for too-baked chocolate penis cakes as a means to serve as an ice-breaker for the housewarming.

“Innie or outtie?”

Hardly through the door, but anticipating the question as the test -- _how cool are you actually, and do you perform well under pressure?_ \-- Roxas pursed his lips in mock contemplation and said, “innie. Obviously,” and moved to the couch. For an added touch of cool-guy confidence, he then said, “where can I find a beer to wash down the penis cake?”

Conversation with the Bellybutton Guy flowed rapidly. First it was the mention of _pickles_ by some guy named Pence when they both gave each other the look -- the one that said _I’d rather die than eat a motherfucking pickle._ Bellybutton Guy then challenged Roxas to a sip-off, betting that there was no way that Roxas could sip PBR more elegantly than he could. Roxas, in between giggling at his ridiculously-pointed lips, sprayed beer at the guy’s face -- Axel, his name was _Axel_ \-- and without thinking dabbed at Axel’s face with his shirtsleeve in between utterances of _sorry_ and more giggles. Axel didn’t flinch, his eyes didn’t darken at Roxas’ touch. And Roxas noticed, then, it was the warmth. As he was caught laughing, looking into the caverns of Axel’s throat, he felt as if he were caught in the middle of some drill when Hayner tapped at his shoulder.

“You cool down here?” Hayner said, eyeing Axel.

Roxas, catching a sly wave of jealousy, didn’t miss a beat. “Things are great,” he said, smiling and taking another drink.

“You wanna go to the roof with me?” He asked, motioning to the darkened stairwell.

“Nah, I’m good, dude,” Roxas said. “I’ve been drinking a little too much to trust myself on the roof, honestly. You go ahead, though, don’t let me stop you.” Roxas gave Hayner his best ambiguous grin -- one that bordered on innocuity and suggestion -- and, sated, Hayner grabbed a bottle of red before heading back upstairs to the rest of the party.

“You guys been friends for a while?” Axel asked, making sense of the conversation.

Embarrassed, Roxas bit his lip. He was suddenly aware of how large his tongue felt behind his teeth. “Y-yeah, we go way back. High school,” he sipped on the PBR, “like I said, I’m not from New York. I’m in Boston for school,”

“Mhm. Harvard?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice. Smart. I’m an actuary for Liberty Mutual, went to LSU for undergrad. I grew up in the South, so being in New York is a bit of whiplash. But,” he eyed Roxas, “it’s definitely more my scene here.”

“Actuarial science is finance, statistics, and programming?”

“More or less. So,” he repositioned himself on the couch, his legs now facing Roxas, head resting on one of his hands. “So Roxas from Boston, how do you take your coffee?”

Roxas’ face flashed vermillion, all buttery and soft. “Lots of cream and lots of sugar.” He eyed Axel, tentatively seeing if he understood the reference.

Axel responded warmly, fluttering his breathtaking green eyes, and leaned in just an inch closer to Roxas. “The gourmet shit?” His and Roxas’ eyes glittered mischievously, as if Pulp Fiction were the most entertaining thing on the planet, neither of them knowing what, exactly, what was occurring between them. This static, a momentous electrical touch, jumped between them. Axel felt a surge of sensible ecstasy, of pure excitement, shoot from his chest down to his pelvic floor, and he visibly squirmed. Shook his head and laughed, ran a hand through his hair. Roxas’ armpits steamed. In between this unspoken mess, their eyes met again, and in an uninhibited air, focused serenely on one another, as if to say, _Oh, there you are._

“You ready to roll out?” Hayner’s annoyingly high-pitched voice cut through the noise.

Roxas whipped his head back to Axel, gazing longingly at that fire-red hair and his black t-shirt and peach-colored lips, unsure of how to proceed. How could he know what would be appropriate? He had just met Axel, spoke to him for maybe forty-five minutes. Of course, there was the obvious truth that he got along very well with him, in an unsheltered way that didn’t require defenses.

“... Roxas?” Hayner said again. A faint blush bloomed on his cheeks.

“Y-yeah,” he responded, peeling his eyes from Axel. Axel frowned at the indentation left in the couch from where Roxas sat. His bodily warmth still emanated from that spot, as if some sort of spirit were left behind in his wake. “We can go now, Hayner. We’re still meeting Xion at the station, right?”

“Yeah, she said she’ll be there in twenty.” Hayner nodded at Axel. “Good to see you, man.” He made his way toward the door.

Roxas stood and looked at Axel, and Axel gazed back, seeing something twinkling in Roxas’ eyes. They saw each other’s faces, as if it were the first time, and froze for one moment in time. No tolling bells sent their sound out; there was no party clatter, no shattering of bottles, no beer pong; it was Roxas from Boston and Axel the Actuary, and they both hated pickles but not pickled food, flitted their eyes in the same configurations as each other, laughed to the point of tears, felt the other’s warmth permeate into their chests. Roxas opened his mouth to say something but nothing came.

“Well,” Axel started, “bye, I guess. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to Chelsea,”

His voice drooped ostensibly. “Oh. You’re not coming back then. The party's just starting…” He looked at Roxas hopefully.

“Damn,” Roxas looked at the ground. “It’s just… I’m sort of at Hayner’s will? I’m here visiting, and I feel awkward screwing with his plans.”

“Nah, I get it. Do your thing. Besides,” he opened up his arms in am embrace and pulled Roxas into his shoulder, “it’s a small world. I go to Boston once a week for work, anyway.”

Roxas stood for a moment. He wanted to remember the warmth. The bodily knowledge. How would it feel to hug another person right after? He didn’t want to know, but that of course didn’t happen, and soon he was cold, felt his lips moving and heard himself say, ‘really great meeting you, Axel,’ and felt his feet carry him down the flights of stairs and onto the starry-looking streets of Williamsburg, wondering how the hell he was supposed to go on as if nothing extraordinary had happened just now. Hayner’s rambling didn’t touch him. It didn’t break his contemplation or his meditative silence. His chest tightened, like a sob would rise and rip through his chest and throat, climb out of him and scream into the black sky: _why aren’t you with me?_


	28. I listened to you, mom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What (might) happen when you drive.

_ I listened to you, mom _

* * *

 

Before age thirty-four, my life was marvelous. I had an excellent partner, a loving brother, a healthy and playful relationship with my parents, a job I loved, and was in the best physical shape of my life. I drummed up new friendships easily and well. Local baristas knew me and I knew them, and I even went before the 7am crowd so that we could chat, giggle about silly things, and to talk about their adolescent boyfriends and girlfriends, how their college applications were going, and the like. The concept of a ‘boss’ didn’t apply to me, as I had been running my own off-duty law enforcement officer business for years. Morning runs were shaped out by the fingers of the glowy red sun, and I was so high up in the cliffs by the ocean that if you superimposed my body to the landscape, my feet touched that watery axis, of the critical point where sky met sea.

After sipping down four glasses of delightfully warm chai-spiced apple cider, I made the executive decision to drive home. My mother, sad to see me leave, hugged me with her strong arms, and bid me well, handing me another bundle of candy cane-shaped cookies. As part of our annual Christmastime get-together, I ate a copious amount of sugar, and always found myself with cups of spiced cider. This year, the party had been hosted by my brother, Wakka, and we had invited our friends from the area. There were also some faces I had never seen before, and it felt special to me this time. Namine, my partner, had decided to stay the night with everyone else, as they were about to whip out Pictionary, which I completely understood.

“Duty calls,” I said sheepishly, when she asked me once more if I would be able to stay. If only I had listened to her insistence.

I loved to drive. I lived forty-five minutes away from the rest of the world, being in the mountains and all, but the winding streets and curvaceous lanes quickly whittled away my reluctance. I wound the corners at a calm 60 miles per hour, mirthfully thinking about the rest of the high holiday season. There were plenty of Christmas carolers in the neighborhood, I remembered, and wondered briefly if they’d make their way over to our house this year when something massive slammed into my hood. The sheer weight punched my car, my modest Chevy hatchback, and I slammed on the brakes immediately. Could that have been…?

Streaks of blood, like arms of the dead,  striped my windshield. Immediately after turning off my engine, I heard the pained panting of breaths, of high-pitched whimpers, as I jumped out of the car. I saw a stray white tennis shoe in the distance. And then I saw him. A slack-jawed guy, dirty-blonde and tanned skin, and I immediately thought of the associated stereotypes of the beautiful beachgoer of California: salted hair, bronze cheeks, and perpetually standing at the surf with their toes in the sand. Bones stuck out, his joints disarticulated. I saw the pink of exposed flesh… And the blood.

“Can you hear me?” I said. Panic set in. I felt it in my cheeks, itching and prickling my skin all over. He said nothing. “Can you move?”

Nothing. Not quick enough, not quick enough -- I dialed 911, and after four dropped calls, finally got through to the bored-sounding operator.  _ You’re in Pac Heights? Our earliest officer can get there in twenty minutes. Please stay by your phone. _

It is an unholy feeling, knowing that someone is going to die. I knew nothing. I sat next to him and held his hand, noticing with shock the bits of gravel and asphalt glued to his palm, sensed his utter agony. I had struck him. Hard. I had broken his pelvis. I saw a lower leg bone jutting out with an arrogant white gleam, edging toward the moon, as if a cruel punishment to remind me that I had done this to another human being. Black blood oozed slowly, carelessly, from his mouth. Glancing at his torn face, I noticed his plum-colored, full lips -- plush lips, the kind that melted into other mouths, like poured cream. Would he ever know that sensation? I held back tears, understanding how awful it would be for me to sob over his dying body. His tanned face began to splotch with asymmetric circles of red.

It was then that another vehicle drove past us. It was not an emergency vehicle. A shy Corolla edged up to me and him, and I saw two people inside. Their windows were rolled down. They said nothing.

“There’s been an accident,” I said.

“9-1-1?”

“Yes.”

I heard a muffled conversation between the two of them, something like hushed voice feigning security. Like a lone cricket in the night, the sound of locking doors rang in my head, and the two sped off back into the night to rejoin the world of the living. The world of time and continuity. I pressed my fingers to my eyes, shaking, wishing that they would understand that  _ there had been an accident.  _ Locked doors. Suspicious eyes. I had been inducted into the world of the murderer, the destroyer of life. Too quickly everything let go of my body. God, from wherever it was, had peeled away my skin from the Earth. There was nothing left of me and nothing left to form me. The man’s hand lost its heat minutes ago, and I ignored the cessation of his breath, instead focusing on the wind scraping the tops of the reeds lining the road. A poster child for the California beauty, I reminded myself again. Shiny blonde hair. Tanned skin and broad shoulders. Lips for kissing. A tongue to never move again, a mouth that would never taste the salt of butter again, would never drink another glass of cold milk.

What felt like eons passed, and finally, an ambulance showed up with a team of paramedics. A woman rushed to the man. Between heaving sobs and involuntary shudders, I cried that I hadn’t even seen him, I’m not drunk or high or under the influence of anything, and was he alive? Her eyes told me nothing. In the middle of this, another paramedic with a scar over his eye turned to me and said,  _ this was an accident. _

They told me to drive home, but how could I get into that vehicle again? I sat inside of it until 5 A.M. When I was a teenager, my mother always warned me about the evils of men: that some prowled and preyed on young girls, how to spot the signs of a killer. She warned against lingering gazes, purposefully slow walking in the black of night. Then she warned against the converse: those too convivial and attractive, the smooth-talkers and suave ladykillers who wanted to wrap their calloused hands around my pretty little neck until my hyoid bone cracked and my world turned to black.

I listened to you, mom. Permanent eyes erupted across every inch of my skin, as if some disease; with each movement I made, I immediately observed its reception among those around me. The back of my hand saw in ways that my eyes could not. No man had ever cornered me, had ever touched me with evil intent. You were so intelligent, so elegant, mom. But in the end, it was me, mom, who made the blood spill out of another body. It was my own white-knuckled grip, hand clasping the fleshy steering wheel, that had sliced another human (heart) in half.  _ Kairi,  _ you used to say,  _ Kairi, always remember that if you are cornered or hurt, you must do two things. Scream. And run.  _ His name was Roxas and he had been skateboarding between two major exits on the highway, played Varsity baseball and had recently outed himself to his family who, surprisingly, responded with open arms -- an oddity in this part of the country -- when the light of his life had been eclipsed by me, the moon in front of the Roxas as the Sun. I remember thinking about Christmas songs and pumpkin puree, can see in my mind’s eye the glint of golden hair before I hear the blood-curdling scream that echoes in my dreams even thirteen years after this happened; it is slow, then fast, and suddenly the clattering of a skateboard on the unforgiving asphalt registers in my mind, and he’s done screaming now, instead lying paralyzed in a bloody heap, whimpering, whimpering:  _ mom.  _


	29. Memory and desire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if you know this about me, but I like to write about dead-end situations and the rupturing of emotions. Enjoy.

_Memory and desire_

* * *

Axel isn’t sure if he could be forgiven, being that he is chilled, and once he sees the contorted, peculiar face of the human in front of him he recognizes that salvation is far, far away. Like some divine being, traversing realms and granting prayers, the human at his feet -- she (he?) -- lacks any normative gender specificity, and in his head, he calls her (him?) Tiresias. Last fall, he was told to look beyond his flesh.

“What do you want? Do you want me to make you come or fuck you?” His heart flutters for an instant. The cocaine plays with his blood vessels, “or do you want to masturbate while I fuck you?”

She -- he -- opens her mouth, and their lips do a fidgety dance, uncertain, and Axel bites the inside of his mouth and feels a new arousal shoot through him. He crawls over to him (her) and touches their lips.

“Think about it,” Axel says, running his hand over his cock. They nod their head and put their mouth on Axel, and he shivers. He’s not sure that he’ll remember this tomorrow.

It’s a slow affair, and for a few minutes, it’s just the sound of spit and sliding flesh, with Tiresias moaning into Axel’s groin, and Axel can’t believe how intense it is. He briefly wonders when the morning light will break through the curtains, and thinks it’s when this happens that he’ll stop doing blow, but when the person -- he still can’t tell if they’re a girl or boy -- stops sucking his dick and looks up at him with blue eyes like saucers, and says, “I want you to make me come,” he forgets about goals for self-betterment. Because what good would it have done, anyway? He starts kissing them like he’ll never get to use his mouth again.

This is one of the nicer encounters. There had been times that Axel had nearly been choked to the point of fainting -- was no one teaching the burgeoning youth about _safe words_ these days, because what the fuck? He’s usually in his apartment, plopped on his old sofa with a cigarette between his lips and straddling a Big Gulp, when he reflects on these encounters. The television flickers at him, as if bored, offering up salacious imagery as “news.” Faded yellow wallpaper peels from his walls, and a perpetual odor of spoiled lettuce lingers above his dull silver sink. There is no garbage disposal, and he fishes out bits of food from the drain with his fingertips before flicking it, bored, back into the un-lined trash can. Axel owns one robe and wakes up around 1 P.M. He failed out of community college and liked the freedom offered by jobs that could only be done at night, even if they placed him below the poverty line. He is the ghost at the supermarket, checking out with a box of Oreos and Pedialyte at midnight, the oddball sitting in coffee shops at 2 P.M. in a town without college students. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. That last boy or girl is on his mind again, and he can’t figure out why.

The girl or boy is Roxas, and he hands Axel his 16-ounce drip coffee every afternoon at 2:15 P.M., and he realizes after Axel’s third visit following their night together that Axel doesn’t remember a thing, and concludes that it’s probably better this way.


	30. I'm just your problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've (probably) all been here.

 

I'm just your problem

* * *

“I don’t  _ know, _ Axel,” Saix says. He sighs as if the world is collapsing, as if he can see the city crumble on the horizon and the last beams of twilight poke through the falling skyscrapers, and he is the sole spectator of the end of the world, and the only bearer of this sight.

Axel is just bouncing his foot on the concrete, hunched over with his elbows on his knees and nervously chewing on his fingernails. 

“Why do you even ask things like that?” Saix blows a plume of smoke out of his mouth and rolls his eyes for the nth time that morning. “Let’s just go back inside,”  _ and get naked _ , Axel thinks, filling in the rest of Saix’s sentence for him.

“Nah,” Axel says as he leans back up, hands behind his head. “I like the weather right now. I’m gonna stick around outside for a little while longer,”

Saix scoffs and flicks his cigarette into the gravel. They’re sitting in the courtyard of his apartment situated in the heart of metropolitan Phoenix, where the poured concrete is a sad eggshell white and the cacti stand brazen and prickly beneath the beating sun, resisting with all of their might the heavy rays of blinding sunlight from the sky.

“Whatever, Axel. Just come in when you’re ready, then,” he stands up and frowns before rustling Axel’s hair. “I’m gonna shower real quick. Maybe you can whip up some eggs?”

Axel nods without feeling anything, and he’s just starting to notice that he is developing a habit of doing things like that - nod, unlock doors, pick up trash, fuck, smile - without feeling much. He sighs and shakes his head.  _ People go through things,  _ he thinks to himself. Saix leaves the door to the apartment open, and Axel hears the shower running. He’s still wondering why the sky is purple in the very early morning, and not red, like it is at night. 

He flips open his phone - a blue Firefly GoPhone - and sees an unread message from that preppy kid from the library the other day, the one who hoarded all of the  _ Naruto _ manga in a ridiculous-looking armful. 

It reads:  _ Done w Nar. U still want? _

Axel smiles. Saix will be out of the shower soon, and he decides that he wants the manga, and finds it odd that he feels a small tickle in his stomach when he picks up his keys and messenger bag from Saix’s living room, and decides that his boyfriend’s wrath is worth a few hours of guilty pleasure reading. He hopes that Saix doesn’t make it a jealousy thing - Axel doesn’t even remember the kid’s name, just that he’s shorter than him and a total weeb. Saix will probably mock him about it -  _ Naruto _ \- but some people just don’t like anime, and he and Saix are just different people, and that’s fine. He feels the buzz in his pocket that signals the beginning of Saix’s tirade, the scorned man denied his sex, and Axel doesn’t want to answer - never wants to answer, really - and all the way to the library, wonders why the sky is purple in the morning, and senses a deeper malingering of something darker, deeper, inside of him - like he knows, knows somehow, that his question didn’t warrant so melancholy a sigh from his boyfriend. 

But for now, the prep kid is waving at him from the glass doors of the library, and Axel likes the way his eyes twinkle, and rushes over to grab a few books from his shaking arms.

“Hey man,” Axel greets, flipping through the pages.  _ Bingo.  _

“H-hey, Axel,” the kid says, trying to stick out his hand from the tower of books in his hand. “You wanna go read on those bean bag chairs?”

Axel smiles and grabs a few more books from the kid’s hands, and he suddenly remembers that the kid’s name is Roxas, dammit. “Yeah, let’s go inside. Kinda cold,” he says, gesturing that they should walk now. “Oh, and thanks for texting me about the manga. I’ve been dying to read the last few volumes. The Chunin exams are wild,” he says with exasperation.

Roxas’ eyes light up. “Oh, you have no idea. Come on!” And he pulls Axel by the sleeve of his shirt into the library, where it’s warm and lit by the diffuse sun.


	31. Hidden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bringing back Outlaw Aqua and Outlaw Terra, the murderous duo in a post-apocalyptic Kingdom Hearts/AU world. Their first appearance is in "Redemption." Warnings for mentions of unusual physical violence because it's the end of the fucking world, and people will do even more depraved shit then. (Count on that).

Hidden

* * *

 

“Turn it off, fuck! Turn it fucking  _ off! _ ”

Aqua whips around and frantically jumps to her feet and runs to pull back the Ifrit’s emergency brake, eyes the size of saucers as she feels the incredible abruptness of the stop, their ship mere meters from a massive satellite. Hadn’t this quadrant been evacuated? It had been centuries since anyone had come to this edge of Galaxy IIA. All the same, she sees what would have happened had they continued on her course: a back-breaking explosion of satellite and gummi ship, their guts ripped from their bodies, hoards of stolen keyblades floating forever in space, with bits of their skin and bones forever stagnant, floating among more bits of metal and machine, an image etched into this arm of the galaxy for the rest of time. Aqua and Terra, their faces ripped into hundreds of pieces, their blood frozen in time and wrapped like ribbons around their bodies.

“Good fucking god, Aqua,” Terra admonishes, rushing over to her. “How the hell did you let that slide? Didn’t you look at this route and check against potential mines?” He still can’t believe it. 

“Of course I did,” she spits, disliking his proximity to her. She can feel his breath on her face. “First of all, you’re too close to me,” she narrows her eyes at him, “and  _ obviously _ I miscalculated. I did something wrong on a large scale,”

“We could have died, Aqua.” He only takes one step back.

She dislikes this feeling of physical intimidation -- or at least the fact that he’s trying to physically intimidate her. In her head, she knows that this is bad.  _ Really  _ bad. There would have been virtually no way for them to salvage or reverse that situation: magic cannot be conjured from an eviscerated body. Curaga cannot reinvent human flesh.

“I  _ know,  _ Terra. You think yelling will change any of this?” She doesn’t give a fuck suddenly and pushes him away from her, pissed off. “And get the fuck away from me.”

Terra stumbles back and summons his Keyblade reflexively, and he’s taken aback when he sees a flicker of hurt pass Aqua’s eyes. He pauses and drops his Keyblade. “Aqua,” he says, walking towards her, features softened. “I’m so sorry--”

“How dare you,” she says, angry. “Pull your weapon on me? Is that how it’s going to be then?” She summons her own Keyblade and throws it at his feet. “Don’t think for a second that I wouldn’t attack you if you charged me.”

For a second, Terra almost believes her. He remembers the times that she’s sent deadly ice spears into the hearts of men for grabbing her ass, even in this age of the galactic apocalypse; she has decapitated the elderly kin of her enemies to prove points, namely, that she has no limits to ensuring her dominion over Galaxy IIA. He’s always been there to clean the rubble. It’s the first time they’ve really fought like this, Terra realizes, in all of their years of killing and mutilating thieves and murderers. He clenches his jaw, not impervious to her threat.

“Actually, I don’t think for a second,” he says, and begins walking towards her, “that you would hurt me, Aqua. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

She shakes her head, a new layer of sweat coating her face. “Words are words. You pulled your weapon on me.”

“Come on. That was a  _ reflex.  _ I’ve been an outlaw for my entire life, Aqua, you think I don’t have immediate responses to physical violence?” He looks her in the eyes. He feels the fight go out of him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. We almost fucking died, and…”

“I know. I’m sorry for that. I don’t know where I went wrong with the radar,” she confesses lowly, ashamed and embarrassed. “Total rookie mistake, and I almost got us killed for it.”

Terra cocks his head at her and his eyes are full of concern. He wonders how it must’ve looked, from her perspective, the moments before she had derailed their course: to literally confront the face of death, how did it feel?

“Aqua, no. It’s okay,” he’s unsure of how to say what he means, so he sits down in her chair instead. “What really matters is that we’re alive. And that this hasn’t ever happened before. I thought,” he averts his eyes to the floor of their ship, “I thought this part of IIA was clean, anyway… Do you think anyone knows we’re here?”

“It’s likely, yes,”

“Fuck. Want to stay and kill them or go to the other outpost?”

“Oh, we’re going to the outpost. I dropped a Orichalcum tracker after pulling the brake, so whoever shows up will pop up on the radar. And then I figure we either keep them for interrogation, or make an example of them for the rest of their team,”

“I see. Let’s get to the outpost, then. I’ll pilot so you don’t have to.”

She rolls her eyes and walks to the command board, waiting for him to join her. They sit in a brief silence, ogling the massive satellite just outside of their ship’s electric field, yet processing the near-death experience. How many times had they nearly been killed? Plenty. Aqua, when they were just sixteen, told Terra to close his eyes once, as she anticipated that her being sexually degraded was the only way out of their situation: they had been drugged with powerful twilight gem gases by a band of eight red-faced men, and they cast Sleepga on her and Stopga on Terra. Their ship stunk horribly, with bits of rodent flesh on the walls and door handles. She remembers her eyes refusing to open fully, saw the world in slanted bits of light and being told to stop moving or else they’d cut her right open. Another time, Terra had been struck by the wing of a ship from Hollow Bastion, and his broken jaw needed two weeks of soupy foods and Curaga every morning just to feel normal again. When he leapt in front of the Hollow Bastion ship, he knew it was completely unnecessary; Aqua would have been able to maneuver their own ship well enough to escape their rapid fire, but it had only been a month after he had been forced to watch with abject horror Aqua be thrown from man to man, to man…

“Aqua,” he says, maneuvering the Ifrit across the quadrant, eyes glued to the satellite. “I’m sorry. About the keyblade. About yelling,” Terra glances at her briefly, his eyes smarting. “I depend on you for my life. For companionship. Frankly, I owe you everything, and I’m sorry for making you doubt me today.”

“... Terra,” she smiles at him, nonplussed though touched. “Thank you. You make a good partner. I don’t know what I’d do without you, either.”

He nods thoughtfully, and they’re spiraling through space now, the stars mere streaks of white light around their heads, and yet his heartbeat is sped up only by her. He wants her to know that he has recognized her genius since the day they first met, on Xanthian, the last planet in their galaxy that wasn’t burned by the fire of the sun. He met her on a beach with pine trees and mosses covering the dirt; she was eleven, playing in the water, and she noticed that his back had been flayed to the bone, bloody and infected with dirt and grime, and she forced him to lay on his stomach so she could restore the skin, the bone, all the while watching the pink sun setting over the water.

She’s gazing at him, really gazing, and she figures now is as good a time as ever, her mind doing flips. He returns her look, waiting for her to say something else to him. But the words never come. Instead, he shifts his vision back to their path.

“What are the coordinates for Outpost 4?”

“2200-41-09,” she responds.

He can’t punch them into the computer fast enough. He feels Aqua’s legs wrap around his hips as the motherboard processes their final destination, and he can’t believe this is fucking happening, and she’s breathing into his neck. Her body floods with warmth and she’s never felt more powerful, sitting on Terra and grabbing his neck like he’ll disappear. He touches her gingerly, taking in the silkiness of her hair, and kisses her deeply, pulling her closer to his body and feels her pulse through his mouth. Terra is warm, and tender, and he shudders into Aqua, and she keeps her hand clasped on his neck. No one has touched either of them like this before. 

They don’t have sex because for them, it’s complicated. Terra hasn’t ever had sex, and Aqua has only been shown sex by rapists. He is unsure of how to show that he cares deeply for her, save for jumping in front of enemy fire for her sake. She isn’t sure what to do with a body -- is never really sure what to do with a body -- and instead settles into his lap, kissing him and eventually loosening her grip on his neck, and opts to lean against him in the chair, feeling the heat leave her body. He rubs her back incrementally, looking out to the black of the universe.

* * *

 


	32. Pending authentication

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A series of images.

Pending authentication

* * *

 

In our past lives we were punk kids, skateboarding when we didn’t feel like walking, hopping fences to jump in the pools of adults, who were away in some air-conditioned office, typing and typing until they couldn’t stand it and had a mental break in their boss’s office, and we didn’t even have the courtesy to pick up our empty beer cans from their yards. That would show them, surely -- some Coors-drinking teenagers stormed your house and enjoyed the fruits of your labor while you were at work, and you’re too tired to even dive into the pool. What a shame.

And your eyes still don’t flutter, your pulse gently threading through your veins. It is for no use, I think, feeling for the twentieth time the small spot on your wrist. 

“Roxas, why won’t you wake up.” It’s no goddamn use. I came yesterday with Olette and she left peonies on your table. There are already tulips and nasturtiums everywhere. We already think you are dead.

I am absolutely convinced that we’ve lived together in previous lives. We fought wars together or something. Maybe we played that Mayan ballgame and met on the field and fell desperately in love, fed each other chocolate and grilled corn and drank pulque together before cuddling and kissing each other to sleep. 

It was hilarious, visiting you during work when we were seniors in high school. That was when we were both adamantly  _ straight and liked girls,  _ and I’m not sure what it was about those cappuccinos, but they certainly did their magic. It was me and you, baby, graduating together and sneaking tiny single-serve bottles of Grey Goose. Do you remember? It was all of us that night after graduation, swimming at Kairi’s house. We licked salt off our hands and shot tequila, desperately sunk our teeth into lime wedges. We were sweaty and proud and jumped back in the pool.

I really want you to wake up. (For me, god. For me.)


	33. O, wild nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the most emphatic, ridiculous, and aggressively random thing I’ll have written to date. Don’t worry, there’s no violence, no need for warnings. Let’s just say that if you’re familiar with the SF Bay Area, then this is my excoriation to you. (I.E. Axel misses his favorite grocery store, meaning I miss my favorite grocery store.)
> 
> Axel's POV.

 

O, wild nights

* * *

 

I hated to say it, especially because it was a concern so superficial and topical and needless, but I can’t help it - I missed it. I missed the Bowl. My first indication that Berkeley Bowl was a different beast, a prowling jaguar in a lush jungle with bared teeth and silky black paws among the idiot pumas and clumsy leopards, came to me when I was eighteen. I had returned from Seattle that weekend. Christmastime, freshly over, left me in high spirits, and I hopped off the plane back into the world of college that I had left for four weeks - the type of thing you can only get away with if you’re a student on a semester system. This guy I was dating at the time, Saix, insisted on rushing me off to the grocery store as soon my train arrived in Berkeley - I remember seeing him the instant I stepped off the BART tracks, there in his indigo-hair glory, his eyes aloof and curious. It was piercing, and I carry it with me, this portrait of a man waiting for me.

There’s a picture somewhere: he’s wearing jet-black aviators and his smile glints in the sun, and it was the time we went to Baker Beach after filling our bags with homemade fig newtons and greedily pouring the Chai Masala from the Bowl into our giant thermoses. Ever-the-fashionable, I remember wearing only a swimsuit that day, painfully desperate in my red trunks, excited to rub sunscreen all over his tanned body and drink in the sun.

A  _ granary _ of nutritional yeast. Yeast wonderfully golden, kissed by Daedalus himself, and deliciously crunchy and smooth, a texture seen by the eyes alone. This is my first memory of going to the Bowl and having my mind absolutely  _ blown.  _ Still toting my modest carry-on from the plane, I followed Saix a half mile to the Bowl, not quite understanding his insistence that I go to this particular grocery store. I half-heartedly said something about Trader Joe’s, not wanting to seem naive, and he scoffed and continued guiding me down Shattuck Avenue. It was so commercial then - and I wonder if it still looks the same. The sidewalks, gnarled from tectonic plate activity, sometimes tripped you and ate at your shoes; streets were havens to the homeless, who made sure to always ask for your leftovers; car dealerships sprouted along the south end of Shattuck Avenue like poppies, bright and abundant and impossible to ignore. We passed a Thai Temple, and I saw an unimpressive-looking Walgreens.

“This is it,” he says in my memory. It’s odd, I think now, looking back at that time: every time I recall it, a small part of his very body chips away: I remember fewer and fewer details, like what the particular brand of soap he had used that day, and then other insignificant ones pop up. His black shirt smelled of Tide and he carted around all of my groceries; he insisted that I stock up on dry grains, and when we rounded the corner of the first aisle of bulk foods, I saw the 10-gallon bucket of glass holding nutritional yeast. (I no longer remember if he bought that Plain or Honey Greek Yogurt. I think it was Honey, but who can really say? I remember that he poured honey into his Maker’s Mark later on. Or was that his roommate?)

The nutritional yeast acted as a floodgate to the knowledge of  _ food  _ that was about to consume and overtake my consciousness. I was the gorilla that had just acquired colored vision to distinguish ripe fruit from unripened fruit. And, in this way, I knew that I would never be able to revert back to that tasteless, processed, pre-made,  _ mentally weak _ and  _ boring  _ and  _ soulless _ way of cooking ever again. In the calculus of human emotion, cooking stands as the most unalienated form of relationality from one human to the next. Taste my sugar. Does my neck do the trick, is my body like poured cream - am I slow and viscous and titillating, do I fill you with hope and pleasure or do you regret it all - (me) - and instead loathe that period of your life when you craved me, my body, as a motherfucking panacea to your every need and desire?

Tens of jars of poppy seeds. Earl Gray tea, with real Bergamot, rested in containers the size of UPS boxes. Every variety of apple imaginagle: Braeburn, Pink Lady, Empire, Cortland, Cripps Pink (!), Honey Crisp, Jazz, Gala, Fuji, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Macoun, Jonagold, Cameo, Idared, Arkansas Black. California oranges and  _ blood oranges  _ and tangerines and tangelos and mandarins and cuties: the scent of citrus so sharp that my brain plaque disintegrated just by being in the proximity of it. And the perfect, ruby-colored persimmons. I remember thinking that I had never seen anything look like that and it was devastating. So smooth. Firm. When thinly-cut, drizzled with dark balsamic vinegar, a persimmon could make you believe again. A cute gnarl of leaves at its head as if it meant to say,  _ I am here now. _

And the  _ pluots.  _ (Oh, god, the pluots.) Could there be nothing more emblematic of god’s perfect imagination?

Saix led me by my hand (I think) to the aisle of oils. He was excited, I remember that. Pointing to this and this and this, but I only recall the single bottle of wrapped truffle oil. It was this moment, smelling the truffle oil with him, that I realized that food is sex. Hunger, cravings, consumption, however, remains the farthest thing from it - sex - if you care to call yourself a humanist. 

“Axel, you really had no idea what Berkeley Bowl is, do you?” 

“No,” I say, “it’s a little far from my house. Usually I just go to Trader Joe’s,”

“The F bus goes from your place to here.” He smiled as if I should have known that, and that I was a fool for remaining ignorant of it for so long. Too long.

In no time at all, Saix was shoving a coconut macaroon, freshly dipped in warm chocolate, into my mouth - one hand on squeezing my cheek, the other hand busy. The flakes collapsed in my mouth and my tongue betrayed my mind and salivated gluttonously, desiring more flavor so strong that it pierced my cheeks. So sweet. Toe-curlingly sweet. To be fair, it tasted expensive - thick and thoughtful, a contemplative chocolate and naively sugary coconut - though we definitely drew the attention of fellow shoppers. There we sat, in the Bowl’s bakery, a grocery-goer’s mecca, which acted as the penultimate task before exiting and re-entering the world of the Subaru-driving cold pragmatism. Chai teas sloshed this way and that, dessert wines exploded from people’s sweaty hands, and hard salty cheese samples were passed around liberally. And the image of a man feeding another man in the middle of a bakery gave pause to many shoppers. We didn’t care, and I didn’t care. Saix could put whatever he wanted in my mouth and I wouldn’t care. (And I didn’t.)

Alas! - lest I forget the truly awe-inspiring selection of  _ beer _ \- Saix also made it a point to direct me to the custom pints of beer. Of ales and lager. Whatever you fucking wanted, he insisted, Berkeley Bowl had. Naturally, I gravitated toward the coffee-ale, Downtown Brown; its obvious  _ gay _ overtones really spoke to me, because I liked the idea of a  _ downtown,  _ and the packaging was clearly thoughtful. Well-marketed. Bright yellow and red and a smart teal. Yes, I still remember the smell: a vague moisture, permeating from the brine used to keep mozzarella and fluffy ricotta fresh, jumped around the alcohol aisle; and there was something of a saltiness from the pita chip station that mixed oil-soaked olives. 

God, could it have been real? I shop at Trader Joe’s again, at this point in my life, and I sometimes go to Wegman’s. Will it disappear, I wonder, Berkeley Bowl and its soul-rejuvenating fromagerie? I feel this way sometimes.

The images flash at me all the time. Oh, what images, you ask? I’m being unclear. The images of people in my life -  _ they  _ flash at me, specifically at grocery stores. At Berkeley Bowl. I reach out and touch a tangerine, and it’s as if their body, now a ghost, overlays my own and outlines my hands. What I touch they touch. I still glance at the olives and see Saix turn around, an attractive grin on his face, as he snatches an olive and pops it into his mouth, a dribble of oil running from his mouth. His indigo hair still has the power to stop time. I look at the rose-colored dessert wines and remember my brief interlude with Kairi: she liked the French vouvray, and we bought fresh baguettes, warm and soft, often. She excitedly picked out new cheeses every week and always left a few extra crumbles for me before leaving (for school, for work, for the pragmatic). It is ordinary. I see beets and I see my own reflection. I spent three hours making a salad once. It fed my family for a week.

What does it mean, if anything, that Saix introduced me to the fine store, Berkeley Bowl, at the elusive intersection of Oregon Street and Shattuck Avenue? Knowing what I know about him now, I really ought to have more reverence for the man. His first gift to me was dark chocolate, lightly sweetened, that he had made himself. He ordered cacao pods, grinded the chocolate, melted it, and poured it into a wooden cheese container. We were outside of Ashby Flowers. I can’t shake the feeling that I am haunted. 

The fruit availability changes often, obviously. I don’t see persimmons after February, and the memories associated with them refuse to bother me until October. Tomatoes aren’t great unless it’s late summer, when the Earth can afford to drench them in sunlight. Pluots rule early summer and I’m never more thankful than when I’m rinsing them in my sink. For once, the running water in my house has a purpose. I visit greenhouses and see cacao plants every time. I think of Kairi all the time. It bothers me how easily my mind is brought to things I wouldn’t think of independently.

There’s probably another story here somewhere. What, do I have to tell you about every failed relationship in order to convey what every fruit, every aisle, every herb and cut of meat, every variety of mochi, means to me? I don’t want to tell you that I still get sad when I drink red blends. I don’t want the world to know that homemade lasagna pasta makes my stomach turn into knots. Why should anyone know that plantain bananas hold so much emotional power over me - joyous and sorrowful - besides those involved? When I think of mochi, all I can think of is my high school friend, Zex. I dragged him to Trader Joe’s and we ate three boxes of mango, matcha, and strawberry mochi, right there in the parking lot. (I miss him. Where does he live now?) These things are all true, but they hurt. Each time I go to the grocery store, it is as if I’m walking past headstones: the prices and sales, usually written in some magenta wash-erase marker, are epitaphs, and I see death everywhere, in this garden of the Berkeley Bowl. April is the cruellest month.

Saix and Axel: best before 12/2016. Axel and Kairi’s relationship would only last that summer. Demyx would crumple in the sunlight. 

It hasn’t been that long but it has been long enough. I’m thinking of the plump figs and their wrinkled skins, their fuschia insides and perfect seeds, begging to be eaten. I’m thinking of my brother, Reno, and I, when we used to eat fig newtons on the floor of my grandma’s kitchen, not caring that the white of her tiles was barely distinguishable against all of the dirt etched in the their pores. He and I would laugh, daring each other to eat as slowly as we could, a sort of childlike fascination with the possibility of slow food. Once we calmed down and our souls alighted on the tops of our heads, we’d lean into the oak cabinetry and take our first bites. Even now, eating a fig newton brings me the same ubiquitous joy: I taste the end and the beginning, the vitality of life itself, of the betwixt-and-between, sunsets and sand crusted on my stomach. I hear the gentle crash of the sea and I feel that initial drop of the sand bar in the water, terrified that I’ll be swept away in a rip current. I taste alpha and omega. I feel it all. And I hope that I can soon open my mouth and let it spill forth - the secret of the universe - from the underside of my tongue.


	34. Authentication pending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief story. Working to write longer ones, but this one didn't want to be pushed too hard.

In our past lives we were punk kids, skateboarding when we didn’t feel like walking, hopping fences to jump in the pools of adults, who were away in some air-conditioned office, typing and typing until they couldn’t stand it and had a mental break in their boss’s office, and we didn’t even have the courtesy to pick up our empty beer cans from their yards. That would show them, surely -- some Coors-drinking teenagers stormed your house and enjoyed the fruits of your labor while you were at work, and you’re too tired to even dive into the pool. What a shame.

And your eyes still don’t flutter, your pulse gently threading through your veins. It is for no use, I think, feeling for the twentieth time the small spot on your wrist. 

“Axel...” It’s no goddamn use. I came yesterday with Olette and she left peonies on your table. There are already tulips and nasturtiums everywhere. We already think you are dead.

I am absolutely convinced that we’ve lived together in previous lives. We fought wars together or something. Maybe we played that Mayan ballgame and met on the field and fell desperately in love, fed each other chocolate and grilled corn and drank pulque together before cuddling and kissing each other to sleep. 

It was hilarious, visiting you during work when we were seniors in high school. That was when we were both adamantly  _ straight and liked girls,  _ and I’m not sure what it was about those cappuccinos, but they certainly did their magic. It was me and you, Axel, graduating together and sneaking tiny single-serve bottles of Grey Goose. Do you remember? It was all of us that night after graduation, swimming at Kairi’s house. We licked salt off our hands and shot tequila, desperately sunk our teeth into lime wedges. We were sweaty and proud and jumped in the pool.

In the morning, nothing will have changed, and I want to know why, Axel, it’s come to this.


	35. Sorry I'm not pulling my hair out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone on my Instagram feed irritated me today, and thus, this was born.

This was about the time that Roxas decided he no longer liked Sora as much as he used to. Sora had just sent Roxas a picture of his and Riku’s newly-signed lease for a place in Pac Heights. Sora, the golden-toed boy, the eternal favorite among silky golden retrievers and mothers alike, sniffled and bawled the moment Riku left for Germany. Roxas remembers it well, the image of Sora, devastatingly handsome, waving pathetically with red eyes, as Riku mouthed numerous Goodbyes to Sora from the other side of the gate. Riku had received a Fullbright Scholarship to study in Munich at the Max-Planck Institute. Sora had just been promoted to his dream job of four years in San Francisco. Yet there he sat, sniffling at the airport, gripping his sleeves with abandon.

Roxas found it nearly appalling. An insult to the experience of life, itself. Could Sora truly be so blind that he could not understand that this situation would be temporary? This would, at most, be a ten-month separation. Sora could not be quelled.

“I think you worry too much,” Roxas said.

“You don’t understand.”

They drove back to their apartment. Clouds passed lazily and the fog rolled in, as it does.

The days passed. What was difficult at first morphed into relative ease. Sora posted all over his Instagram morose images of the sea. Tattered pictures of random city streets, emotionally-void captions about the ordinariness of his day. One photo that particularly made Roxas’ blood boil was a sideways image of their kitchen. Sora captioned it: “I’m gonna be real and this - I want to be where you are, I fucking hate this, this sucks, I miss you so much.”

Then Sora flew to Germany for one week in November. Then Riku came back to San Francisco in December for one week. Then Sora went to visit Riku again in March. And then Riku returned home from Munich at the end of May. Each visit had been more decadent than the last: Sora, grinning widely and a face like a gem, poured his high tech salary into every meal with Riku, from foie gras to French reserves, had arranged for romantic hot air ballooning over Paris to see the Seine. Riku lavished Sora with intricate gifts from the belly of Europe. There was a set of Polish silverware, and then a Greek table mat, a bag of dried figs from France’s southern coast, and a customized stein from Berlin. Riku abruptly moved into their apartment upon returning from his Fullbright.

Roxas moved out, unable to stand the complete mediocrity of his two best friends. Two people, unable to stand even a portion of life without the other, sobbed and cried and traced the muscles on each other’s back every night they slept together, as if each time would be the last. But Roxas wondered profusely, wondered with great awe, if Sora or Riku had ever bothered to take that seriously - what _would_ be a last time? What _could_ be a last time - could they even fathom that?

Roxas knows. Roxas knows too well what it is to choose a different kind of love. He knows that loving another person is unapologetically contingent on physical proximity. He knows the images well. Flashing smiles and red hair hanging lazily from the edge of his bed. Soft touches along his spine that, with each pad pressed to his skin, remember the curve and dent of his body. It is text messages sent intermittently. It is pain and horror. It is finding that you can connect with other people in different - maybe better - ways than you could with the person you allegedly love.

He hasn’t called Axel for a few months, and their texting is less urgent. Roxas, the one who stayed-but-didn’t-stay, lives in Chicago now, pursuing an M.D. He didn’t mean for it to happen - falling in love, he means - and Axel, well, Axel is selfish. Axel doesn’t know how to handle the ichor that is Roxas unless it is quivering beneath him. Axel is teaching in Japan indefinitely. Neither is willing to sacrifice their dream for the other, and Roxas is convinced this might mean something about their love for each other, but he can’t quite say what, and he is too busy enjoying his new life; after tomorrow’s rotation, he’s going to the cabin for a long weekend with a gorgeous guy named Cloud, and he’s happy - he is - but he remembers the feeling of The Last, (Axel kisses Roxas’ hands over and over, crying freely, it’s nighttime), and it stays with him, cloying, and he refuses the milky climax of it, always, paralyzed with fear that if he allowed it, he might never be able to push Axel out of his mind again.

Roxas went to Chicago and Axel went to Tokyo, and Axel is also full of mosaics, every cell in his body vibrating with hopes of some distant future that might contain Roxas. He's teaching, he's running and eating so well that he knows for a fact that his friends would give up five years of their life to have the meals he has on the daily. There are cracks in his vision, obviously, and invasive, repetitive thoughts. How can he decipher if it's _real love_ with Roxas or if it's exceptional sex - radiance? He thinks on this all the time and it's been months upon months. He texts Roxas less frequently now, their calls nonexistent. Roxas kisses Cloud in the cabin and likes the mint on his breath. Later, as they sip apple cider, he sees Axel in his periphery.

Axel feels Roxas with each twist of a doorknob. Wonders what he's eating for breakfast that day.

(You left but you stayed.)


	36. A ghoulish ego

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of Howl’s Moving Castle here. Axel and Roxas because I love them.

A goulish ego

* * *

The moment I stepped into the kitchen, I sensed something was off. Xion, whose face usually gave off a radiant peace, slid to my side, breathing heavily. She looked at me for a moment and then said, “we’ve got a situation.”

In the world of undergraduate cooperative living spaces, a “situation” could mean a few things: there was a fire, someone tripping balls on the roof, or a suicide attempt. I paused, apprehensive.

“Axel was stood up.”

I can’t quite place it, but my skin prickled at this. I pulled up a stool to the kitchen island, fishing for almond milk in the fridge, already tasting the sweetness of Oreos dunked in its cold froth.

“Roxas, we’ve got a _situation,”_ she said again, her face urgent and practical.

I rolled my eyes. “Axel was stood up,” I echoed. I brought an Oreo to my mouth.

“He’s been slumped in his chair for the entire day. He smoked, like, four bowls on his own. He’s a fucking wreck, Roxas,”

“Then go sit with him. I’m eating at least a sleeve right now,” I motioned to the package of Oreos, irritated. Xion shook her head and ran back up the stairs - a loud thud every few seconds. The world must always answer to Axel, it seemed. To never wonder about how others are feeling, what must that be like? His life, at least at this coop, had been so mercilessly _charmed_ that it made me want to puke.

More thuds hit the stairs and suddenly Sora was in front of me, his face reddened and gaze far-off. “Roxas, you’re here!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “This is great! Here,” he grabbed my hand, yanking me from the stool, “come with me!”

“Why, Sora?” I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach. Sora didn’t answer.

We climbed the stairs all the way to the sixth floor - Axel’s floor - and I wanted nothing more than to just leave. School had been kicking my ass lately, and I just needed a nap. To be alone in my room, blanket pulled over my head. _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban._ Some tea.

“Axel, look who I found!” Sora flung open Axel’s purple door with the strength of an ox and hurled me inside.

“What the fuck, Sora?” I looked back at him, pissed. “I didn’t fucking ask to be Axel’s _keeper,_ ”

“Yeah, we know. But you’re the only one he’ll listen to,” he nodded cheerily and laced his fingers behind his head then walked down the hall. He even started whistling a fake-upbeat tune, and I heard him start talking with Xion, their steps growing more and more distant.

I turned back to Axel. He was, to be fair, slumped in his favorite velvet chair, facing the window with an air of utter despondency. His guitar had been forgotten and left on his bed. His signature black boots looked like they’d been haphazardly tossed to the corner. I flipped on his lamp, desperate for light.

“I don’t want the lights on,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. I saw him flinch.

“Too fucking bad. I don’t want to be here, yet here I am.” Sitting on his bed wasn’t exactly comfortable.

“Then leave.”

“Gladly.” I stood up and strided toward the door, my hand on the knob, when I felt him clasp my wrist. _Great._

“What do I do,” he whined to me, his entire body keeling over. He let go of my wrist and crashed into his bed, narrowly missing his guitar, and buried his face into a pillow. “Am I no longer desirable?”

_Good fucking god._

“I don’t know. Whoever stood you up just didn’t want to see you, and that’s it.”

He turned his head to look at me, his eyes welling with tears. “But that’s can’t be it. ‘Just like that,’ I don’t buy it. Something else…”

“Listen. You need to shower. Go do something, anything other than lie here and cry about it. Here,” I tried to push him onto his back, but he resisted. The bastard. “Why, Axel?”

“Because!”

“I don’t have time for this shit. You’re a drama queen. Do you,” I began to feel my anger well up to my throat.

“Do I what?”

I had initially decided to keep my thoughts to myself, but that impish look he gave me, as if challenging me, made me choose the other option. “Do you even _know_ how cruel people can be to those who aren’t as, like, gifted as people like you?” I felt the anger pulse through me. Let him know it, then. He sat up and cocked his head sideways. I wanted to push him.

“What…?” He genuinely looked puzzled.

“You’re crying because someone _stood you up._ You think you’re not, what, beautiful or hot or sexy anymore? My fucking ass,” I walked back to the door, shaking with anger. “You have no clue what it’s like to be _normal_ at anything, much less _normal-looking._ So no, _sorry_ that I don’t give a fuck that the love of your life this week stood you up. The rest of us non-beautiful people, well, we get along just fine. I’m sure you will be fine, too, Axel.” I bit back the rest of my comments. Seeing Axel’s expression change during my tirade was satisfaction enough. He shot out of his bed before I could say anything more, and he put his hand on the door, his eyes never leaving mine.

“You are normal,” he said flatly.

I grimaced. “Yeah. Got it. My eternal curse.”

He stared at me. “It is no curse.” I looked back into his eyes, unsure of what he was saying to me. He opened his mouth as it to speak then paused. “Roxas,” he said, “Roxas - you’re beautiful. You’re beautiful and think you’re not. I’m sorry you think that.”

I wanted to leave right then, and I did. I ran down the flights and into the backyard, biting back uncertain tears. Embarrassment, maybe? Anger? I couldn’t tell. I was just so angry. Did he think that I thought I was ugly because of me? It was because of other people telling me, constantly, that I had weird hair or funny lips. My voice shook when I spoke. I could kill to be taller. My hair was the color of corn and not sunlight. The analogies used to describe me centered on the ordinary, mundane, soulless. Axel had never known praise without hyperbole.

“It’s gonna rain soon,”

I didn’t care to wipe my eyes. Let him see me cry, I didn’t give a fuck. He stood adjacent to me, looking at the tree in our yard.

“Alright,” I said. I didn’t move. A cold gust whirled around us, and the beginnings of a storm brewed around us.

“Roxas…”

“What, Axel. What do you want?”

“I want you to come inside.”

“Why? We don’t like each other, in case you forgot that.” Images of him drinking all of my beer flashed in my memory. The one time I yelled at him for fucking too loud at 4am. The other time he dumped cold water on me in the shower because I made out with someone else in his bed as revenge.

“I think it’s _you_ don’t like _me,_ actually. Anyway,” he turned to face me, “it’s getting cold. Let’s go inside.”

“You just don’t fucking get it, do you? I don’t like you because you’re an asshole. You sat in your chair all day because someone stood you up. You expect me to give a fuck? You don’t understand the world as it is for the rest of us. You have no idea what it is to be not-beautiful.”

He grinned. “So smart but so fucking stupid. You. I’m going inside,” he touched my shoulder and lingered his hand for a moment too long, “I’m gonna eat your Oreos if you don’t come in, by the way.” Then I heard him open the door and close it behind him.

I hated myself for thinking it, but I felt it. What about me is beautiful to you? I wanted to ask. I walked back inside and heard him humming in the kitchen. Maybe I’d ask him now, maybe in a week.


	37. The prince(ss)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short-lived idea I've been toying with. Kairi the commodified princess and Sora as the masquerading princess.

Within moments of meeting him, I knew that the princess was actually a prince, and that ‘she’ had turned away every servant boy -- and girl -- from her bed for precisely this reason. Rumors of the princess being a woman with a heart of gold circulated the palace and only made her more desirable. For whom would this be saved? With a near-perfect physique, the only thing more beautiful than outward beauty was inward. She held her gaze on me, eyes as deep as a canyon, and followed my every move. From the initial bow to my act of supplication, I would notice the sharpness of a man’s features in any slant of light. It hadn’t occurred to me until this moment how intimate supplication was. I, bent on my knee, slid my hand onto his knee, and the other hand on his cheek. To their face I gazed.

“Kairi,” said the ‘princess,’ his voice in falsetto.

“Prince Sora,” I said.

In my own kingdom, Twilight, I had been traded as tribute. My eldest sibling, Namine, had wrongly fornicated with the prince of Destiny Islands - long ago, it had been decided that her maidenhead would be saved for  _ this _ kingdom, Oblivion, and this princess-transformed-prince. But her legs had been bled, her womb filled: the contract was broken. Thus, I was sent as the eldest daughter, to serve under the King of Oblivion, to a woman-princess no less. But here I stood. I looked into his eyes, and I wondered why he had chosen to keep his gender a secret. Surely there was no reason for it -- men were treated in deference, always. 

The most vulgar of acts would be remedied with the most vulgar exchange: a daughter for another daughter. My father’s name had been shamed beyond recognition. 

“Tell me,” I began, “why do you hide?”

If he were a pious man, he would tell me this secret. Supplication is indiscriminate.

He opened his mouth as if to speak. He took my hand in his own and kissed the palm deeply, as if it were common practice between us. “You are sharp. I will tell you soon, but not now. Come,” he said, rising. “Let me show you where you will be staying.”


	38. Tokens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all have memories and nagging thoughts.

_ Tokens _

* * *

 

Destiny Islands used to protect me. And I, the fool, thought it would be my savior until the end of time. How could I not? The islands gave us solace -- all of us. There was Wakka and Tidus, Kairi and me. And there was the other one. I can’t remember his name. He, like the Islands, disappeared years ago.

What was your name?

(Sand is kicked up and bites the back of my legs as we run across the shore to the palm trees. I see a sky-blue ocean and the surf tickles our feet. Somewhere in the distance, there are seagulls and shells and salt -- always salt -- and for some reason, bottles roll in on the waves. They all contain pieces of paper, but I’ve never opened them. Since that other boy left, the fight has bled out of me. He and I used to collect old trinkets, broken glass, that sort of thing. I don’t feel that drive anymore.)

But she’s calling me for dinner now -- my mom -- and this journal entry is longer than most. I have to go now. She really needs me.


	39. The second we part

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slowness of my updates! My motivation has been waning, and then I flew to Thailand. I'm determined to actually do one story a day until 1/29, though. To whomever reads this, I hope you enjoy.

_The second you walk away_

* * *

 

The second we parted ways, I wanted nothing more than to follow him, wherever it was that he was going. In a few excruciatingly simple seconds, I handed him my paper, and he took it from my hands with a shy smile on his face. This was the nature of things, the relationship between a student and a teacher. There is a disappearing person with fire-red hair - a brief shimmer of light hits his head as he hops down the wooden stairs, down to the fountain - and then he turns the corner, my paper in hand, presumably off to some cafe. To this day, I still wonder where it was that he went. 

I wanted to give him something different. A different paper. A different piece. The one that I gave him was boring and incomplete. The story of a prince and a pauper - how overdone, how fucking trite. Was this really how I wanted to portray myself? I couldn’t help but scold myself. In a rush, I hurried to the nearest library to print out something else, something different and more exciting. Something complicated and emotionally obtuse because maybe we would fall in love or something. Pulling up files from my flash drive, I quickly double-clicked the piece called “The Seagulls,” and printed without thinking. 

By the time I had ran back to where we had met just five minutes before, he was gone. I looked around the corner, hoping he might have taken a seat in the vicinity. Axel - my TA - was nowhere to be found. Scurrying along the curbside, I ran toward the university’s main street, only seeing students dressed in collegiate gear and carrying coffee thermoses. Memorial Library loomed over me; its pillars seemed to curve toward me wearing lurid smiles and taunting grins -- they had known that I was a fool, had failed somehow. But there, in the distance as if this were a film, I spotted his hair. He stood at a crosswalk. I wanted to know his walk from a mile away. He glided past the granite pillars and onto the main street. His hand clenched my paper; it was bent and stuck out in jagged corners, and my heart fluttered. 

He crossed the street and slipped into the alley next to Cafe Blue. I couldn’t follow him there, I knew that much. Was it a shortcut home? A smoke break? Where are you going, I wanted to ask, and will it be the right place? I wanted him to only see royal purple as he read my paper, with his hands clenched, his breathing shallow and anticipatory, imagining candlelight. 


	40. One other thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Before you go..."

It started and began with dessert _._ He spoke of it with great urgency, as if it would disappear completely if it were not continuously formed by the ins and outs and sighing of words themselves. I held onto each syllable as if it were a rope hanging from a cliff. It was the deep-fried shell of a coconut-based dessert served at one of the bay’s most expensive Japanese restaurants - this dish alone cost $32, and the wagyu strips at $85. It was a high concept sushi bar with dramatic lighting to add to the performance. Servers did not stay to chat; salmon was not salmon but _flaming salmon_ and you had to count to thirty and then blow it out. Sake was poured liberally and much. I shivered at the level of pampering I was receiving.

“So what do you think?”

I hadn’t known Axel for long. We had gone out on four dates prior to this one, each one more decadent than the last. I smiled gratefully. “It’s wonderful. Dessert first is a fun way to mix things up,”

He returned the smile dutifully, pleased with himself. “Good. I always get dessert first here because you might get too full for it later. And this,” he motioned toward the coconut sphere, “is too good to pass up.” Axel brought the sphere to his face - it was an event, really, this glowing white orb of ice cream and shaved hazelnuts quivering between his hands - and bit into the hard fried exterior, slurping the pool of freshly melted ice cream.

It was like this for a while. It was us looking at each other from across the table. It was high-end restaurants at the North End of town and street parking with a tyrannical meter, demanding $12 for an hour. It was his office overlooking the Charles. It was us suddenly naked in places where we weren’t supposed to be naked. He always called me by my full name - Roxas Tripp - and it soon became a joke where I’d answer my phone and say, “Roxas Tripp speaking,” and he’d put on his professional voice and respond with, “Sir, may I take you to dinner tonight?”

It was like this for a while. He invited me to wine tasting. I invited him to cafes. He asked about my professors and panels and I gabbed about the free food at every event, and this was always met with a raised eyebrow from his end. Perhaps it was because I spoke so freely about what it was to be a poor graduate student that he took me out so often and to such beautiful places, but I wonder if he actually internalized the respect I had paid him. I could see it from a mile away - he had been taken advantage of. His portrayal of love was in purchasing and in gift-giving; mine was in time spent together. I knew right away that he didn’t believe me. That I told him that I do not need luxury, only his company. He didn’t believe in bluntness or in assuaging delirium or mystery.

“I’ll be gone for two months, Axel,” I said.

He smiled. “Right. You’ll be off on your adventures. When do you come back again?”

I told him the date. He frowned this time and said, “Damn. I have fifteen days off and none of them overlap with yours. How about this,” he leaned forward, and I could see the back of his eyes. “You think of me and I’ll think of you.” Mischievously, he picked up the tiny wooden spoon meant for the coconut sphere and slid it into his pocket. I think he got off on doing things that made no sense. Likely the wealthiest person here and he still chose to steal the dessert utensil.

“Okay,” I said, looking at him with all the stars and teeth possible, “Okay.” I grabbed his hand and smiled until I was sure that my jaw would pop.


	41. The difference

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been thinking a lot about the Final Trailer, especially the moment in which Lea asks, "who are you?" This is one iteration of that scene in my head.

_The difference_

* * *

 

Axel swears that after his first meeting with Sora, at Castle Oblivion, he portaled right back to Twilight Town and vomited at the base of Station Heights. That ever-setting sky, with its sideways sunset, taunted him for days after the event. He had never seen another face like that.

He remembers, after twirling his chakrams around Twilight Town one day, that Roxas told him that he really had no idea what love meant, anyway - so what business did Axel really have, trying to explore what this might mean? For some reason, it felt mechanistic - too simple, too blocky and undifferentiated, their talk about what love might be, anyway - and Axel couldn’t pinpoint why. Years after their initial conversation, after Axel had come to terms with what followed Roxas’ departure from the Organization, Axel recalled his time at Oblivion, looking back and thinking how stupid they all were - the place they sought disguised beneath their feet. Now, as he continues flinging his chakrams and twirling brief spells of firaga and sleep into the air, the spells’ dust floating on unassuming Nobodies, he can’t quite pinpoint the lapse in memory.

He shrugs, tossing another spiky chakram into the head of a churchgoer of Twilight Town. It’s just business, he thinks, struggling to dislodge the spikes from the kid he killed. Nothing personal, he thinks again, as the boy’s body finally gives and falls to the ground with a dull thud. He shakes out the chakrams, bits of flesh and blood flying from it.

It is Monday. (And it was Tuesday, was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday…). And you’re still not here, he thinks, grabbing at the empty air around the Old Mansion. He vaguely remembers what is was like to be _Lea_ again, for that briefest moment of time. He hoped. He believed in Sora, in Kairi, and Riku. During those days, something inside of him had curled and licked and ran around, and when he finally did see Roxas again, it made his heart ache with a dull and powerful pain and he couldn’t breathe. When he saw the face he had longed to see for years, his feelings of regret and anguish grabbed for his beating, bloody heart, and twisted. He couldn’t say it - _Roxas_ \- and when he was face-to-face with him, the golden-haired Roxas, and he couldn’t remember his fucking _name,_ Roxas outstretched his hand and incinerated the dusks surrounding them.

“My _name?_ You can’t remember my _name?”_ A darkness overtook his eyes and Axel, sweating and weak, was about to apologize. His words were eclipsed by Roxas’ firaga spell. The dusks around them let out a weak, dying moan, and turned to dust. A rotten, fleshy smell pierced Axel’s nostrils and he gagged.

Roxas grabbed Axel’s legs and threw him into the air and caught him with magnega and sent a slew of ice his way. Axel refused to fight back. He let himself be coated in layers of ice so cold that his skin burned off. Let his body be torn, one limb at a time, by the powerful gusts of the aerial blows Roxas dealt him. He did not start when the fire, at long last, was introduced to his feet and hands; floating and floating in Roxas’ magnega, he fainted after having endured too much pain. He woke up in the bowels of Radiant Garden, saw the impressive Frankenstein-looking stitches across his body, and walked to the Great Maw. It was not long after arriving that he realized that, indeed, his portal abilities had returned. The chakrams still answered to his summoning.

“Morning, stranger. Where ya been?”

He turned abruptly to face Demyx, sitar in hand. “Hey,” he couldn’t breathe. “What are you doing here? What’s been going on?”

“Uh,” Demyx scratched his head. “I’m not sure? I’m here doing recon. Thought Boss sent you and XIV out here to take out that flying heartless, no?”

Axel flexed his jaw and his vision blurred. “What?”

Just at that moment, Xion emerged from the mountain trail, a giddy smile on her face. She held up two purple-colored sacks. “Good news! I found our munny!” Her eyes flitted over to Demyx. “Hi Demyx. Surprised to see you out here!” She grinned.

Demyx nodded good-naturedly and looked back at Axel. “Looks like you haven’t found that giant heartless yet, huh?” He summoned a portal and walked towards it, and Axel still couldn’t see straight. “Oh, just so you know, Roxas regained consciousness. Boss was checking him out earlier today, asking questions and all that. Thought you’d be interested.” He nodded at Xion. “See you back at the Castle,” he nodded at Axel.

But he remembered this moment because it has occurred years ago. He remembers the Great Maw and remembers walking the plaza with Kairi - she listed, with great energy, all of the nuances and particularities of Radiant Garden, pointing to this bridge and that shop, some secret tunnel network, all of it - and he can’t tell if he’s alive.

“So,” Xion cozied up to him, touching his arm, “Twilight Town?”

Axel’s eyes were distant though, looking off at the layers of nothingness in front of him, feeling the immensity stretching from his fingertips; in the back of his mind, he knew and knew _damn well_ what was occurring, but he couldn’t stop it - when did he ever succeed? - and buckled under the weight from the Realm of Light and fell to his knees, inadvertently summoning a portal and spiraling into darkness for just a few short seconds, and resurfaced at Xehanort’s feet in the Badlands. Xehanort’e yellow eyes glowed.

“That,” he crushed Axel’s pinky finger with the heel of his boot, “is why you will give your body to me. I own you, and nothing can help you. Not Roxas,” Xehanort motioned to a faceless body in chains, “and certainly not Sora.”

Somewhere in the distance, Axel thinks he hears a shout, but he can’t be sure; he slumps into the blade Xehanort slides into his back and he feels his body surrender, and hopes with his entire body that the boy to link worlds can fulfill this final mission meant for a god, or something close to it.


	42. What rough beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cyclicality and dualisms. Consequences of action and a preponderance of depression - knowing that creation of something great comes at costs of time and emotional upkeep.

What rough beast

* * *

 

He had been trying to give Roxas some space for a few days, but Roxas wouldn’t let him. Around every corner, he was always there, tears in his eyes, wanting to talk. But Axel knew better. He knew that it was bait - Roxas, the self-sabotaging romantic, wanted at the same time distance and fleshy closeness, and it was Axel’s job to know the difference between the two. This time, it was distance. Roxas had been quiet lately, scoffing at the dinner table Axel had just set, and sighed into the couch as if it were the most exhausting thing in the world. He had been eating from the same sleeve of Oreos for a week, and the TV volume was too high and he hadn’t changed out of his jeans in two days. Axel had told his mom that it was “nothing serious,” this fling with the blonde kid, Roxas. 

If you had asked Axel what he thought about these emotional spells that Roxas would fall under, the answer would vary based on his current mood. If the morose Roxas had been relatively easy to deal with, then Axel would give you a delicate smile and shrug, “it’s how he processes things.” But if you had asked Axel this same question, right after an episode featuring Roxas flinging banana peel after banana peel into the living room while shouting about the humidity outside, he would grind his teeth and snort, would say, “he’s a fucking bitch. You can’t ever have a moment of peace with him.”

They were both young, so young, only ages 23 and 24, and they were both sloppy. They had been colored out of the lines, had been hastily stitched together by some unskilled angel sitting at the loom, and had no idea what it was to compromise. When Roxas didn’t accept the space Axel tried to give him, Axel would flip tables. Would destroy his desk lamp “just to prove a point,” he said, angrily unscrewing the light bulb, ignoring the hot blisters forming on his fingertips, and hurdling it into the bathroom. Glass crashed and shattered and settled all over the bath tub. On an ordinary afternoon, they couldn’t decide on what movie to see, so after two hours of acrid, vulgar jabs at each other, Axel had fucking had it and broke their dining room table in half, relishing in the splintering of wood right down the middle. Roxas scoffed and walked down the stairs and started the car with Axel noiselessly following him, buckling his seatbelt in silence. 

It would take two break-ups and nine years for them to finally figure it out - mutual respect - and on their last first date, they ate every last bit of food - no one in their right mind would dare to waste a fine Peking Duck - and drank their ice-cold Tsingtao slowly, thoughtfully, and sat across the table from one another. Axel rubbed Roxas’ hand thoughtfully, at the correct moments, and spoke to the server with a melodious voice. Roxas spoke of his time in Uzbekistan dreamily. Said it was ice-cold, that he hadn’t slept on a real bed in years. For the first time, Roxas thought Axel’s steely, bohemian appearance matched his lifestyle: Axel had just signed for a full-time job as a Storyboard Artist at Pixar Studios. Axel cracked some joke about how he’d never have to want for pancakes again (Pixar, as it were, was located right behind an IHOP). At the conclusion of their last first date, they kissed each other fully and deeply, taking in the smoothness of the other’s face. They didn’t sleep together. Instead, they lounged on Axel’s couch, Roxas’ head on his stomach, and talked all about their siblings, their failed relationships, their other friends. Two years had passed and it read like a powerpoint script, how they caught each other up.

But it was only the fourth year they had known each other, and they hadn’t even broken up for the first time yet. It is not a neatly-drawn graphic novel, their relationship; there are no discrete boxes to hold the anger of their fights, no thick black lines to prevent the wrong emotions from spilling onto the next page. The residues of Roxas’ shouts from page eight can be seen in the tentativity of Axel’s light, feathery touches on page eighty. The first time they broke up, it was surprisingly calm, like a leaf swaying in the wind. Gentle and glum. Axel toted his belongings from Roxas’ apartment, and Roxas watched him walk away - his walk, it was slowly at first, then it broke into a sprint, Axel’s shoulders sloping to the right, his legs sweeping in wide circles, as if he were maimed, his entire body slouching as if toward a bright, blinding light. 


	43. A confession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a hot second since I've updated this - sorry! I am just proud of the fact that I've kept this little project alive for so long, despite the interregnums. I'm going to go ahead and write in this project indefinitely, the release date of KH3 be damned. My project is more of a celebration of all of the creativity and perseverance that the series has elicited from me. Anyway, enjoy this take on... well, whatever it is.

A confession

* * *

 

Perhaps more discouraging than the lack of answers were the lack of questions. For ages, Roxas - Roxas the Magnificent? The Deity? A day of the week? - had parsed through the inquiries sent up by mortals; where he once used to snatch them out of the air with great fervor, he now rarely belabored anything beyond the initial, half-formed thought of, “another.” First there was the question about utility. Then as they began to sculpt themselves, and as they learned how to start flames and invented new technologies to kill others, the questions became at least more interesting beyond the mere, “on what day of the lunar cycle must I pray to you?”

The simple answer to that one was that Roxas didn’t really give a fuck, so long as the sorry soul left a pot of figs or cherries or wine at his altar. He forgets who named him what, and sometimes he sends the wrong lightning bolts to the wrong peoples, and then has to deal with the mess of genetic drift. In those cases, he usually just throws in an earthquake to disguise the building of new mountains to counter population bottlenecks; often, he uses tsunamis and general oceanic turbulence to either build or unearth waterlogged landmasses. After accidentally drowning an entire series of islands in an admittedly careless answer to someone’s inquiry or prayer or whatever, he thought a little more carefully about his apathy, but ultimately decided that the cyclical nature of humans just made them so _not worth_ responsibility. In the case of Atlantis - at least he thinks it was them - he decided to reward the neighboring kingdom of Phoenicia with a war victory by demolishing their enemies, and he flicked his wrist just _one fucking degree_ too far to the left, and instead of the decimation of the lowly Tlatelolco, it was Atlantis that was destroyed.

Someone has been asking more questions than usual, though, and the contents of them are actually interesting, he thinks. There is the usual prickly nihilism - of course - and there are times of great heartbreak, but what makes this person interesting is his similarity to Roxas. See, before Roxas, there was someone else, but he had deserted this universe. Left some note in the Great Hall about needing to find a new order. This person with the new prayers, Roxas thought, reminded him of that other person who left.

Roxas slowly reached out to grab the floating envelope in front of his face. It had been stamped with a red seal - _curious_ \- and it was from the person who bothered to ask the good questions. He opened it with a snap of his fingers and an eyeball fell out of the envelope and onto his lap. Stunned, he cocked his head and poked at it, wondering how it had sent. Slowly at first, then like an explosion, the eyeball morphed and jumped into the air and a pale face grew around the socket, and a burst of ruby sprung into existence and Roxas, curiosity piqued, let his face simmer in delight as he peered into the venomous green eyes of the fellow archangel standing right in front of him.

“Are you here to join me?” Roxas asked.

The red-haired angel held out his hand and a knife appeared. He rushed Roxas quickly, had pushed the blade into Roxas’ heart before he could even gasp in surprise. Axel gazed sternly, aloof, into Roxas' watery-blue ocean-like eyes. He thought of springtime. “S-something like that.”


	44. Pretty attempts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KH3 has taken over my life. Will push out updates to this until I decide to stop. Enjoy.

_ Pretty attempts _

* * *

 

Axel knows how it’s going to end because he always knows how it’s going to end. He’s sitting on the gnarled bench again, like he usually does right after his Negotiations lecture, and taps his foot against the concrete. It is four months now that he’s given up drinking. There was no call for this abandonment, no earth-shattering fist to punch him back into the realm of piety. This change, he reasons, is for no reason at all. 

He feels the need to turn his head back to see it. Imagining warm sheets, he sucks in his breath and stands up, making his way toward the campus’ science center. There had been an absence of sunlight for two weeks straight, and this morning, he heard birds chirping in the trees surrounding his house. A bounce in his step, perhaps delighted in life itself, he chugs to the massive building located in the heart of Downtown, and without much thought thumbs the raised skin on his wrist. He frowns for a moment.

It is tired and gruesome, he thinks as he sits next to his waiting student. It can’t keep going on like this, he thinks again.

“It’ll be partial differentials today. Your midterm is coming up.” Axel greets, pulling a white binder from his book bag. “How does that sound?”

The student pauses for a moment, and Axel feels sudden dread hit his stomach like lightning. Caught. The student smiles. “That sounds perfect. Let me get my problem set out.” There’s a brief pause in which Axel can only hear the gentle whir of shuffling papers, punctuated by the louder, more edged clanks of pens falling on the tile, pin-pricking the ground.

Axel is smiling wearily, like he always does. He brushes his hair back with his free hand and leans in to inspect his student’s work. “Nice. Your work is really coming along,” he compliments, pleased. “I do think we should focus on 4C, though.”

The student nods vigorously. “Y-yeah, I was gonna ask about that one. Here,” he unleashes the wrath of his pencil to the yellowed paper, numbers pouring from flimsy lead.

Axel, of course, watches him scribbling frantically, seeing and observing when a great warmth blooms in his chest something magnificent, a plume from the bottom of his spine rising and rising. For a moment, he forgets about it - relishes in this candle-flicker moment of peace, of the results of hard work, and he would have believed it if some person had walked up right then and stated,  _ what’s up with that halo above you? _

The student incorrectly derives the equation and the light fades faintly. Axel looks into the abyssal crowd of milling students and wants nothing more than to forget what he already knows. 


	45. A star-shaped eye socket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for death and bullying. This is all post-KH3 now. Spit this out because feeling emo as fuck and want to use creativity to feel better. Future installments will probably follow this theme.

A star-shaped eye socket

* * *

 

_ One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock rock. Four o’clock, five o’clock, six o’clock rock. Seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine o’clock rock. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock rock. Bong bong bong bong bong bong bong bong bong. Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie! If you’re not ready, holler “aye!” _

That I even tried to rehearse this nursery rhyme as I wiped the  _ pint _ of blood and rainwater from his face should have signaled to me immediately that I was in no condition to care for another human body, much less him. With what futility do we act, I wonder with great ironic hindsight, while understanding that it is our emotional self that imprisons us? I didn’t fucking know. All I knew was this. I had been injured. Badly. Stabbed in all the right places and probably staph seeping into all of my open wounds. Sora had been thrown into a concrete pillar not once, but  _ four times,  _ by those fucking huge guys who wore pointed boots. 

As it turned out, I would never walk normally ever again. My tibiofibular ligament had been completely torn, and my ankle would require a brace for the rest of my life. Gave up snowboarding. Hockey. Running. I paid the price for taking it up the ass, I guess, and for being the general fuck-up that I would become following this incident - full-on intravenous drug user who sucked cock for another hard slap while I blew my cheeks up like a puffer fish and held my breath as Demyx poked my neck with another needle, gooey blood spurting everywhere because he was sloppy, so god damn sloppy - I deserved it. All of it. 

There are times that I’ll just plunge my head into a sink filled with ice-cold water to see how long I can go before giving myself a breath of pussy oxygen. It is sweet and so soft, pillowy. And it’s at these moments that memories of him strike me like a bolt of lightning and I collapse, unable to stop the sobbing. (Riku wouldn’t call himself a sleepwalker, but he knows that he walks at night, and he trembles knowing this.)

I know you’re not hiding in the dark alcoves of an underpass. I know that. I also know that no amount of blow will ever make you real again.

* * *

 

Once upon a time, there were two boys who lived in Queens. Growing up hand-in-hand, they shouldered the burdens of the mundane together. Sora, the younger boy, comforted Riku, the older boy, after his first real heartbreak in high school. Some blonde with huge eyes ditched him for a sexy guitarist type. When Sora was rejected from his dream program at NYU, Riku bought him one of those old game systems that could play the original Super Mario Bros, and they laughed and cried all night. And, as it were, the day before Sora was to leave Queens for Austin, he brought Riku to their favorite park and cried, told him how much he’d miss him, that he’d fallen in love with him. Riku, ever-the-paranoid, kissed Sora’s hands. 

A fist the size of Jupiter crashed into Sora’s cheek while Riku struggled to breathe against two bony fists. Riku is winning the struggle, dusts himself off when he hears the unmistakable thud of human body slamming into concrete. It is a low, humming sound, with no echo. After the first thud, Riku locates the location from the vector: he sees it in a tainted lens, sees himself running as if through molasses, watching in horror as Sora is dropped again, watching concrete discipline a circular body, realizing with immense sorrow that the last thing Sora will ever see is asphalt, and that atonement would not save him. Riku’s gasping, and he wouldn’t ever stop.


	46. The kitchen god, ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been reading Dreyer’s English. Editing finally makes sense to me. And so do the wrongs of comma splices. 
> 
> Here's part ii of an Axel and Roxas that I really love. More installments to come.

_The kitchen god, ii_

* * *

 

Axel’s hands hurt.

So did his knees and his toes. Radiating pain shot up his joints, settled in his lower back, his sacrum. He could crack every vertebrae in his spine, he’d brag _._ He didn’t dare try cracking his wrist though - that would be the beginning of the end, and they all knew it. It had been a particularly hazy Saturday night - he doesn’t remember much of what occurred at the bistro, or, excuse me, _Les Notes,_ save for the faint image of a reduction exploding in his face and Riku shanking the new guy the second after Olette locked the front doors. It had been ages since he’d seen him that angry - and rightly so, with this motherfucker who spilled not one but _three_ specials on Axel. Riku’s secondhand rage had been a sight to behold.

It’s Sunday morning at ten o’clock and he’s lying in bed, recounting the bone-crushing weekend he had had at the restaurant _._ It’s his first day off this week. He’s dreamily conjuring images of his bathroom - that sweet, sweet bathroom - and he wants to invent a urethra-extending rubber tube with a type of vacuum suction to keep piss from waterfalling back down. He wants it to go all the way from his bed to the bathroom, and to trickle off neatly into his abused toilet bowl. Have some self-cleaning mechanism. He’s not sure if he’ll ever be able to move again. _(“You fucking come in here and shit all over our hard work?” Riku heaves his chest into the terrified server whose belly rubs into Riku’s sweat-soaked shirt. “You will not be hired here, and you want to know why? Because I will not fucking work with you! Get the hell out of my kitchen!”)_

Axel’s hand is too close to his dick as he’s thinking about Riku fuming like that.

He tended to get melancholy on Sunday mornings. Melancholy and perhaps even philosophical, if he dared to privilege himself such a term reserved for degree-holding academics who wore pointy glasses and drank sherry. He’d think about nebulous things like _the point_ and inferiority and conclude that his and Riku’s decision to fool around with Olette - at the same time - was made under totally sober, clear-headed thinking. That it wasn’t predatory, manipulative, driven solely by lust. Or worse yet, inspired by proximal intimacy. Because he’s not actually gay; he just makes really, really good money from sucking cock. The ball-fondling, the moaning, stroking of the hair? That’s decorum - a sprig of parsley. He’s a fucking cook, for god’s sake, and he likes pussy. Likes it all over him.

He shifts in his bed, rolls over and rifles through his nightstand for a cigarette. It lights easily and the world flattens out with one exhalation.

It was practically naked, how much he wanted her. And Riku. At the same time. Declarations of non-specific goodwill simply _lingered_ in the air from his mouth; his sideways glances clung to Olette like ivy; the way his eyes would pause at Riku’s lips was not unnoticed. There was a sustained, floating glance; mushrooms flew everywhere. (Axel’s and Riku’s skin glistened with sweat as they bore down on their sweltering dishes, and Riku peeked up at precisely the moment Axel had elected to steal a look at him, and he held Axel’s gaze for a steady one… Two… Three. Then the moment collapsed and the kitchen returned to chaos.)

Axel had grown used to assuming the worst of those he worked with - an unspoken rule of the land - and it yet came as a surprise to him, when last night Riku smashed his lips into his own and simultaneously reached for Olette’s neck. Axel and Olette turned to poured cream under Riku’s touch. It had been a lascivious affair. There were lips everywhere; spit coated all of their bodies; Olette’s nipples slipped easily into their mouths, and Axel rubbed her clit with a practiced and constant rhythmic regularity; before she orgasmed, Riku moved Axel’s hand and ate her out until she came, her pussy fluid all over his face.

Axel inhales too sharply and coughs all over his hands. He’s really coughing a lot this time, and runs to the bathroom for a dash of water from the spigot and to finally fucking piss. His eyes are not bloodshot, to his surprise. The preemptive gatorade he had bought last night would go to waste, he realizes, when it dawns on him that he has no hangover. Weird. But he remembers how he promised _Riku_ that he’d let him read a little bit of his… Writing. The real prick, Riku, rarely boasted about his breeding or educational background, but when he did, it kicked you right in the teeth. The day after he met that blonde guy Roxas, Axel bitched to Riku for one entire shift about his abhorrence for The Man, the verismilitude of institutions, of fakeness. And it wasn’t just a fucking Tuesday shift; Axel went into great detail about the comic loftiness of Upper East Siders and their fixation with the phrase _golden handcuffs,_ as if each time they used it, their dicks would literally grow an inch, on a Friday night.

Riku, sensing a different kind of tension in him, cleared his throat. “You seem to like that blonde kid,” he said, slicing into mackerel.

Axel rolled his eyes at yet another order of _coq a vin._ “That’s all you got from what I said? Kid’s half the story. Not even. Jesus,” he grabbed for the sauvignon blanc.

“Well,” Riku started. He crinkled his brow. “You started chatting about this guy who almost got killed by a big ass van in front of Xi’an. And you keep mentioning he’s blonde, and now you’re bitching about rich people,” he smirked. “Again.”

“Okay, got me. Why do you give a fuck?”

“Because.” He looked at Axel mischievously. “You like the upper echelon shit. Can’t hide it from me,” he said.

Axel shook his head. “Nah man, not like that.”

“Oh, then what is it like? You think you’re fucking William C. Faulkner, reading in between your shitty job shifts, crafting the next big thing?”

“Well no, but I--”

“What? You a writer?”

“Kind of?”

“You write?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

Riku took a long, hard look at Axel. He smiled. “Let me see it. Tuesday.”

Axel realized his mistake. He wanted to take it back. “It’s not like… _That,_ though. You know?”

“No, Axel. I _don’t_ know.” Riku scoffed. He cut just the tip of his pointer finger and muttered a weak-sounding _fuck._

“Like I’m not… Gay,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, out of the earshot of other cooks. “It’s just work, you know?”

“And how does _writing_ inform you sucking cock for cash? Afraid it’ll make you look like a -- a girl? Like the fucking new guy?” Riku cut into the fish a bit too harshly. Axel frowned. He knew Riku was into guys. But he also hooked up with Olette on a semi-regular basis. But if it weren’t the money, Axel reasoned, he’d given up on men a long, long time ago.

Two servers suddenly burst into the kitchen - Pence and Hayner - and they frantically ran to Chef Strife, tears nearly formed.

“Chef,” Hayner said, attempting to maintain a face of calm. But Cloud doesn’t hear him over his popping sauces. In the distance, they could hear the faint echoes of the dish guy, singing and likely already plastered.

 _“Chef Strife,”_ Hayner pleaded. The chef turned to him, his eyes glowering.

“Speak. Now.”

Hayner looked at Pence and Pence stared back. Cloud’s face reddened. He began to list what each wasted second was costing him: these sauces would fucking burn; there would be no hope for duck served opulently; and did Yuffie have that fucking risotto out yet?

“... If another god damn moment of silence passes, then _both of you will lose your fucking--”_

“Leon’s here. At the bar. Olette’s talking with him.” Pence said. Yuffie gasped. Riku deadpanned. They all squirmed under Cloud’s murderous glare.

Cloud peered at Pence for just another moment, inspecting his face for any signs of treachery. Of mutiny. He made eye contact with Axel and Riku and Yuffie, ensuring that he had heard correctly. “Leon…?”

“Leon, Chef. Yes.”

“Get him the fuck out.”

“Chef, he won’t leave. He said if you didn’t come out, he’d, um… Come in?”

It careened into him all at once - the failure of his restaurant. He saw it all: the mouth-covered giggling among his wealthiest guests; at first, it would be relentless jeering at his inability to keep his personal life out of his professional; he’d be a fucking joke. His vendors, hearing about the debacle because it’s a small fucking world and word travels fast, would give him second-rate cuts at prices given to chains because if his ex can fuck him, then they could too. He paled. And this was one possible death of a five-star joint along Park Ave - reputational. Death by grumpy, curmudgeonly regulars whose perfectly-curated Friday nights had been tainted by a scorned lover, apparently the chef’s. Death by Yuppies’ nature to be given to narrative hyperbole. _Les Notes?_ It used to be good. Used to be great - exquisite, even. But the chef can’t handle his shit, and his ex-husband broke all the dishes and threatened to throw up a slideshow featuring Chef Strife, drug addict, doing every bad thing he’d ever done in his life...

Leon needed to get the _fuck_ out of his restaurant.

“You,” he pointed at Axel. “Bounce him. Now.”

Axel, shocked that Pence had the gall to even utter the Forbidden Name, froze. “Me?”

Cloud had no time for this. “Right,” he said after a moment. “Homophobe. Well, sometimes. Riku.” And before Cloud could instruct further, Riku disappeared from the kitchen.

That was Friday. And then Saturday, Axel fooled around with Olette and then possibly with Riku. Which brings us back to pensive, melancholy Sunday.

Axel is smoking his seventh cigarette of the morning. It’s cold out and the city is covered in a light mist and pale sunlight barely penetrates the clouds; he’s walking around his room now, unsure of where he placed his tattered notebook, and he can’t shake the feeling that Riku thinks he’s a homophobe, too; he turns the corner and catches his reflection in a full-length mirror, an ordinary reminder that it is him, and him alone, in this house. He can’t stop thinking about the whole Leon ordeal, and that Chef called him a homophobe. He wanted to argue with him, to shove his face into a mirror, and ask him, cheeks bloody from the falling shards, if a homophobe would really take it up the ass three times a week. Would a homophobe really spend his days thinking about some Columbia pissbaby because he has nice hair and a kind voice?

 _Riku._ He finds his notebook and plops down at his desk with mild abandon. Riku didn’t know shit, and he thought he could comment on the situation? Of him and the blonde guy? Fucking Riku and his pretentious education. He had a knack of slipping into cracks and twisting your guts from the insides. He could force you to realize things about yourself that you didn’t even know you didn’t know. Axel is disdainful. He’s considering tossing the book altogether, but knows that if he turns up empty-handed to Riku come Tuesday, that his week will be a living hell. It feels weird now to think his name because of the whole blowjob thing. Riku certainly didn’t make Axel orgasm twice, and it certainly wasn’t the hottest thing Axel had seen all week - the image of Riku enveloping his dick, again and again, absolutely obscene, and Olette watching them both, jaw unhinged, licking her lips. She wanted more.

See, Axel _liked_ this part of the job. He liked the messy chiasmus: sex in food, and food in sex. To blur the boundaries of line cooking by introducing the material of human folly excited him; he often considered it his lifeline. At the restaurant, it was always the trinity of him, Riku, and Yuffie who brought the kitchen to life from its ashen, midnight slumber. He’d hook up his old iTouch to the speakers and blast cacophonic, loud, dancing music: their kitchen was insular, chaotic, kingly. Riku, reigning Fish Guy and thus the guy with the most precise knife handling, would cut them neat little lines on his dainy non-work cutting board. One by one, they’d really lean into it, snort three times, and usually mimic some shitty air guitar solo and sing the chorus at the top of their lungs. It was their fucking kitchen. And Chef Strife never saw this behind-the-scenes work. This off-putting labor.

And when Axel would head down to the Wilmer law offices on Friday nights, he’d be equally as charmed when his clients took him to dinner first. For the only time in his life, he was on the other side of the swinging doors. He knew most, if not all, of the cooks at the good restaurants - well, the ones that opted to serve _supper_ as opposed to _dinner,_ because supper went until 2 A.M. Axel was many things - a coward, a slut, cook, smoker, dealer - but he wasn’t stupid. On Friday nights, he worked until 11 P.M. sharp, and quickly bounced to the financial district to catch the overworked, depressed, stupidly rich men leaving their offices, and offered them a coy smile. A shoulder to lean on. A friend. (Who would fuck you. At a very high price.) It was always pathetic, in that excruciatingly mundane way, when they’d offer to order room service with cum still all over their chests and mouths. Axel always refused on principle, but he did like it - this messy chiasmus.

His head snaps from his notebook at the sound of his phone ringing. His heart skips a few beats when he sees it’s from a number he doesn’t recognize.

“Hello?”

“Hey. This is Axel, right?”

He feels his face pricking with heat. “Y-yeah, that’s right. Is this…?”

The voice brightens. “It’s Roxas! Sorry I--”

“I thought you weren’t gonna call,” Axel cuts him off, his breath coming in threads.

“... Sorry. I was saying, I had a pretty rough week, but I know that two weeks is, like, way too long to wait.” He fumbles a little bit, feeling awkward on the receiver. “But if you’re free sometime this week, I’d love to grab a coffee or something.”

Axel can hardly believe he’s alive. His entire body feels like it’s peeling away, and too many seconds pass before he realizes what Roxas just said. “Um,” he twirls his hair in his loose hand. Nervous. “Y-yeah, um, what about now? Does that work?”

“Now?” Roxas sounds surprised. “Hmm. I can do now, totally. Where do you wanna meet?”

Axel is running around his apartment. He’s looking for clean jeans, for a shirt that hasn’t been soiled with permanent armpit sweat stains. “I’ll meet you anywhere.”

Roxas smiles in a way that Axel can hear. “What about Mill Korean by the university?”

“Perfect.” He throws his atrociously dirty towel on his counter. “I’ll see you in an hour.” He hangs up and lets out a long, deep sigh, and then steps into the steaming shower.

* * *

 

Talking with Axel is bewildering, Roxas thinks. He decided to wear black jeans, leather boots, a slimming button-down and down-feather jacket. There was no point in rejecting the stereotype, Roxas thought, if it kept you both well-dressed and warm. Axel had thrown on his Levi’s, a black sweater, and his windbreaker. Brought a beanie just in case - the one with the Calcifer flame - and Roxas nearly doubled over when he saw Axel wearing it because oh my fucking god.

They recount the moment Roxas was almost taken out by the van in front of Xi’an’s Famous Foods - a remarkable Chinese food place - while slurping up their steaming bowls of bibimbap. Roxas ordered a cold brew coffee and dumped about a quart of cream into it. Axel opted for green tea.

“I seriously thought you were gonna die for a second, I shit you not,” Axel confesses, laughing.

“Me and you both!” Roxas throws his hands up. “Yeah, glad it didn’t happen. Oh, but I never thanked you for making sure I was okay. And for giving me some of your food. So,” he smiles brightly at Axel, “thank you.”

Axel looks up from his salty, boiled egg and stares at Roxas with such intensity that he feels reality receded. “N-no problem, Roxas.”

“You haven’t been out with someone for a while, huh?”

“What? What would make you say that?”

“Well, for one, your face is as red as a beet. And you’re stuttering, and I didn’t take you for a stuttering type…”

“Um, well, it’s not that, necessarily.”

“It’s okay,” Roxas sips his cold brew, his eyes sparkling. “I’ve been out on enough Tinder dates for the both of us. But I have to say, I really sort of… Like you.”

Roxas reaches across the table, hand nearly touching Axel’s. He doesn’t want to freak him out. But Axel is exploding inside. He’s clenching his jaw and feels fucking _butterflies_ rise up from his stomach, and he closes the distance between their hands, shuddering at the warmth of Roxas’s palm. What soft skin. An easy gesture.

“Yeah. I… I like you too.”

* * *

 

Axel _loved_ blood in his kitchen and in his food, and he was nearly certain that Roxas would never be able to _like_ him anyway, not fully; to love Axel was like loving a black hole, and he didn’t want to do that to Roxas, the blonde kid who’s just some fucking student at Columbia that doesn’t know better than to fuck with a washed-up line cook and professional whore. To make Roxas come would be cheating, Axel rationalized to himself as he turned for the eighth time in his lumpy mattress. Cheating on himself, because he wasn’t even sure how much he liked guys, and Roxas likely stuck out to him because he was just so god damn pretty. Because he looked like a… A girl. What are these monsters, though, that eat away at your psyche, crunch your bones, and refuse to spit you out whole and transformed? They’re the ones that lurk at the edge of your bed, looming and imperious, feeding off your self-hatred and growing with every minute you turn away. No way Roxas could stomach Axel beyond ramen dates and walks in the park; rightly so, with his tainted dick and abused body, with his calloused cook hands that read like a map, the injuries.

He can’t sleep. (He can never sleep.) But tonight he can’t think, either. It’s the first Friday he worked a full restaurant shift without dipping out to the financial district after. He shot back well whiskey with Riku and Olette, looked at them with hazy, bloodshot eyes, and decided right there that he wanted Roxas more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. But he was an Ivy League prick who had a white-hot future, beating with wealth and success and gold watches, and it certainly wouldn’t contain some loser, second-rate cook with razor burn. A latent self-hating homophobe. With hands that could sand the floor of a gym. Nah, he wouldn’t want that, and he shouldn’t want that. Axel throws down a ten, says his goodbyes to Riku and Olette, meekly waves to the bartender, and slinks back home. Thinking. Wishing.


	47. Victims of love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, you should know that the shit I write is truly gnarly. outlaw!Terra and outlaw!Aqua are back in action and are fucking shit up. I also made up some characters for the sake of story continuity. Goriness and graphic images - you’ve been warned. 
> 
> On a personal note, I really don't know where this came from. I hope you enjoy.

_Victims of love_

* * *

 

The first exercise was in being gorgeous. _Gorgeous_ first. And burying the dead was second.

People rarely, if ever, died from natural causes. They died from gunshots wounds and drug overdoses - sometimes suicide - but most of the time, it was from cold-blooded murder by the uncaring hands of people like Aqua and Terra. Because of the odd clumps of people that the destruction had randomly selected for, the stately quests for the capital-t-Truth had vanished. Where there was once a jovial, nostalgic sense of goodness there now existed the too-human instinct to defend one’s bottled water by cutting off the head of your enemy. Dead bodies, with their flaking skin, were only valued as cautionary symbols. Bits of indiscernible flesh were left in trails around kill sites: a fingerless hand here, the tip of a nose hanging on a wall, an entire leg left to rot in the entryway of a dingy thrift shop. _(“Where’s… the rest of it?”)_ Terra’s bracelet of molars spoke to this sentiment. Dead bodies were rarely, if ever, buried, by the two of them. They preferred alternative methods of disposal.

Aqua threw her head back and swallowed. It still burned her throat, made her redden. “That,” she began, a great wave of relaxation overcoming her, “felt phenomenal.” A huge grin snapped across her face as she turned to face Terra. She hastily reached for his mug and sent him a coy look, as if daring him to stop her from taking his drink. A few gooey ticks of the clock, and the mug slammed down in front of him, surprising a few of the other men hunched over their drinks in the neon-lighted bar.

“Terra-a-a,” she whispered, “think you can keep up with a Keyblade Master?” Without waiting for a response, Aqua put up two fingers to the bartender. Nodded. Someone a few stools over, dressed in floral pants, snickered. Terra nearly responded to this, but reminded himself that, for once, the time had been shot gold. Only four days had passed since they landed in Oxbury; this planet was a bit different than the others, and here, _different_ just meant cold. There was actual rain and bright, blazing light-up signs on every street corner. Aqua said it had been a big city before the Hundred Days.

An icy drink slid into Terra’s hands and it sloshed this way and that, its milky froth nearly spilling on the wooden counter. The bartender handed Aqua a nearly-black stout. She smiled gratuitously, eyeing the darkness of the liquid, her mouth salivating as she anticipated its full-bodied nuttiness.

“I think we should cheer to you.” She lifted her glass. Raised an eyebrow.

He really shouldn’t be this charmed by her.

“Why me?” He asked honestly, unsure of the sudden display of affection. Was she still pissed at him for the whole yelling-at-her-for-nearly-killing-them thing?

“No reason,” she answered, puffing up her chest comically, “or maybe every reason. I cheered myself last time,”

“You did? I didn’t hear you,”

“It was in my head,” hiccup, “but who cares. You,” she brought the beer to her lips, “really need to catch up with me. Can’t remember the last time we were off the ship.”

“And if I don’t keep up?”

She paused and looked at him inquisitively. “You’ll have a Keyblade Master on your ass.”

He wanted to keep looking at her, and he was sure that she hated it when he did that, so he blinked hard a few times and threw his drink back, picturing the mix of liquors pumping down his throat as if they could absorb into his veins. And this is what it meant to have to be gorgeous, first: eight of the guys in the bar had already replayed the scene in their minds, over and over, of them gripping Aqua’s exposed waist and fucking her with abandon while everyone else watched. Their problem was Terra, obviously; a few of them knew the bartender, knew that he had a Nobody Lance in the back and that it could knock out guys five times as big as Terra.

Terra, however, had been caught by the eyes of the eight men, too, and this is where the story complicates. Zander, the bald guy, was an old world mage, and knew that he could send anyone to sleep with a snap of the wrist. He was a pervert though -- the kind that got off on tying other men to chairs so he could really finger their asshole without dealing with their squirming ministrations. Som, Oxbury’s notorious junkie, also wanted to walk over to them -- Aqua and Terra -- and feel their skin, run his hands down Aqua’s neck and lick Terra’s cheek from his jawline to his ear. What a miracle, that even the softest, most miraculous skin, could break.

Som slinked over to Zander, catching the gazes of Omni, Surat, and Quin. He licked his lips. “I see you seeing what I see,” he mewled, a playful melody in his voice.

“Yeah. I do.” Zander kept a steady gaze. It had been years since he had taken in someone as beautiful as Terra. Oxbury, the biggest disappointment in modern galactic history, had fallen off the map decades ago, and as such, never received visitors. Only those who were extremely wealthy could make it out here -- wealthy, or on a bounty hunt, he supposed. At the rate that the two of them were drinking, though -- Aqua’s skin positively flushed and Terra is crying from laughing so hard -- he doubted their warrior skill set. An old world mage, Zander knew how to identify an assassin: smart, tight-fitting clothes; no visible tattoos; musculature in odd places; and, most importantly, _weapons._ Magicians had died out in this part of the world. Wizards were a thing of the past, and, well… The keyblade wielders had been taken out in the first month of the Hundred Days.

Hypnotized by lascivious images of him breathing hard into Terra’s neck, of him coming in between Terra’s ass cheeks while Aqua lapped at his balls, Zander hastily concluded that Terra’s bracelet was fake and Aqua’s long, purple cloths were the most hideous, unpragmatic articles of clothing he had seen in years. No visible weapons. There was no danger. They were the wealthy, beautiful type on a self-indulgent mission to, what, sleuth out sad old Oxbury, and laugh at the miserable fucks who hadn’t made it out yet?

Zander frowned sharply and took Som’s flask, poured himself a generous shot. “What are you thinking,” he said to Som.

“I’m thinkin’ if we can put them to sleep then Quin’ll be real happy,” Som turned to the smallest of the bunch, “isn’t that right, Quinnie?”

Quinn, long goddess hair down to his knees, nodded. “I’m in love. Never seen anyone prettier in my life.”

Som smiled. “We’re countin’ on you, Z.” He felt an erection coming on and openly palmed it beneath his pants. “Don’t let us down.”

By the time they had laid out the blueprint for their ambush, Aqua and Terra had already identified that they were going to be attacked -- they didn’t know the specifics of the attack, but given their knowledge of men at large and of how the Hundred Days really fucked with people -- and had conjured their own plan which was, at its core, quite simple.

“I almost feel bad,” Terra said, his voice low and eyes dark.

“Same. But not quite,” she hummed. “You ready to get up?” Aqua looked behind Terra at the group of men a few meters deeper in the bar.

“We’re good?”

“Yeah. They’re still chatting away. Idiots,” she stood at the instant one of them had fired a gun where her head was moments ago. Where there was a painting of the old monarch was now a huge, gaping hole, like an open mouth. Terra, stunned, felt panic seep into his stomach. A thin stream of blood erupted from her face from where the bullet had grazed her cheek.

Zander froze. “... H-hey now, didn’t mean for this here gun to off, was a mis--”

Aqua hadn’t seen Terra move that quickly in her entire life. She had hardly breathed when there was an excruciating shriek and a crash of glass bottles as Zander’s head flew behind the bar; the rest of them, giggling like hyenas, melted in front of her eyes. Terra’s keyblade materialized with a heavy metal thud, and he spun on his heel and let out a yell.

“You,” his voice echoed. Grabbing Som and Omni, he unleashed a devastating chaos blade; teleporting with the speed of the wind, from person to person, he left no body unmarred. Before stabbing Surat clean in the heart, Aqua saw him lean in and whisper something in his ear. Surat’s entire expression fell and his eyes rolled to the back of his head when Terra sent a spear of ice into his chest. Terra threw Surat’s body across the bar, his blood gushing all over the rickety tables; he opted to spare the bartender, figuring that their reputation needed to be spread by someone in this worthless, craven, godforsaken town.

“Sorry,” Terra said in a hurried whisper, placing his palm over Aqua’s. “I know I went against the original plan. I think we should go.” He jutted his chin toward the exit. Their antics had started to draw a crowd, and a small crowd of clownish figures had began to gather outside. The bartender fled the second he understood Terra’s actions.

“... Okay,” Aqua nodded, wiping at the blood on her cheek. “Is it bad?” She turned her cheek for Terra to get a better look.

Puzzled, Terra held her gaze. He knitted his eyebrows together. “No, but even if it was, you could just cure it. Are you,” he paused, unable to find the words, “are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” she made her way to the exit, Terra trailing closely behind her. Before exiting to the street, she stopped and turned to him. Crossed her arms. “Curaga can’t regenerate a body part. Especially a head.” And this was the moment that Aqua almost regretted killing all of the people she had killed. In a sudden surge of memories, she recounted the faces of her victims. Their eyes were usually wide open, showing off their red capillary action, and jaws clenched; this was the face, she realized, when the human body registered a pain so dark, deep, and unfamiliar that its only response was to collapse on itself and surrender to the alien trauma. To wither up. Fade to black.

Terra had known her for so long that he deemed it acceptable to gently push her outside as she had her moment of self-reflection -- the crowd had grown huge now, and if they didn’t hop back into their ship within the next ten minutes, the Oxbury Force would fall on them like dusks. Boys’ and girls’ jaws dropped to the ground on seeing Terra’s blood-soaked keyblade.

“Aqua,” Terra tried again to get her attention, his voice growing more urgent, “we’re gonna need to run, I think. I see an armed force coming.”

Beneath a glowing pink sign that read COME FOR THE GIRLS, Aqua stopped in her tracks -- she had felt a change in heart. Terra gasped when her keyblade appeared in her hand.

“We’re not gonna run. I want to burn down this block. Do you care to join?” Briefly, she met Terra’s eyes and shrugged. In a huff, she began firewheeling down the sidewalk, igniting storefronts and catching bits of brush that had fallen from trees earlier in the week.

Still meditating on that impulsive chaos blade, Terra sighed and followed her in a light jog. They had tried to kill Aqua right in front of him -- why kill? He hated that he wondered at the obvious distinction -- and according to his moral compass, this was reason enough to destroy an entire city and its inhabitants. Its boys, girls, animals, flowers. So when he saw her beaming spheres of bright, blinding firaga into unsuspecting second storey floors, he cast thundaga in its wake. During a particularly gruesome raid -- they had been without food for five days and were positively foaming at the mouth -- Aqua mentioned to him, in between gouging the eyes out of that scrawny assailant who kept calling her _sweetie,_ that thunder-based magic actually helped prolong the scorching of fire. He had broken some ambush guy’s neck -- why would anyone hide behind a door? -- while listening to her, and answered her, his voice sweet and warm: “Next time you cast firaga, I’ll be right behind you with thunder.”

That was the first time he told himself that he really, really shouldn’t be so charmed by her. (But he was; god, he was, and it wouldn’t stop anytime soon.)

An iridescent flare shoots up into the sky and it’s Aqua’s megaflare. He’d recognize it from a mile away. The screams started. He raised his keyblade high into the sky and summoned all of his strength to conjure a precise, concentrated beam of thundaga and -- his toes curl at the effort -- a sonic wave erupts from the sudden beam of thunder inside of the megaflare, and the dingy buildings flatten to the ground. He rolls his eyes, hearing the wails of kids nearby.

By the time he actually reaches the square with that fucking bar, Aqua is glowing like magma and brilliantly sidesteps all of her assailants; Terra knows what’s coming for them and winces in their place, taking a few steps back. Some grumpy-looking man with a black rifle in his hand smirks, watching Aqua’s magical parade, and curls his finger around the trigger. But she notices and she’s there, is there in an instant because she’s always there, and presses her burning forehead to his, breaks the barrel of the rifle with a simple squeeze. He yelps at her touch. She spins and kicks his legs out from under him, and raises both of her hands above her head as she begins her final attack -- the raging storm. Terra calls it the fire typhoon.

The entire block is ablaze. The heat is getting to both of them; it’s not quite melt-off-your-face hot, but will be in just a few minutes. Terra casts firaga at everything he sees. Aqua slams into him by accident and nearly kills him as a reflex.

She exhales heavily. “It’s hot,” a fat sweat drop rolls down her face, “wanna get out of here?”

Terra likes Aqua when she’s like this, but it really is too hot, and he needs to leave. “Please.”

“Okay. Stay close to me.” She casts a barrier over them, and they begin walking back to their ship. “The flames won’t stop for at least a few days,” she guesses, looking around.

Terra evaluates the damage, too, smirking. “Good.” He reaches for her hand -- something that they’ve been doing recently, especially following the ship incident -- and she enjoys feeling his palm on hers.

They’re at the ship about to board when Terra pauses. “Just so you know, if you ever died,” he looks at the ground, feeling exposed, “I’d avenge you, down to every last enemy. And then I’d probably just off myself.”

Aqua bites the inside of her cheek. “You wouldn’t try to find a way to bring me back?”

Her response catches him off guard. “W-well, I just don’t know if there’s, like… A way, you know? Ever since Ven…” His voice breaks. They’re used to this.

“I know. I miss Ven so much.” She walks over to him and links her arm into his. “Shall we ascend?”

He’s a picture -- a bright smile, a chiseled face, and honey-brown eyes that would make you believe in god again -- when he’s with Aqua, and he just stares at her as they walk up into the ship, knowing she probably hates it, and just does it anyway.

(Oxbury is burning… Burning.)


	48. A game of chess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s explore the spiritual dangers of VR. I chat about information technology a fair amount, so if it goes over your head, I apologize. I try to explain as much as possible without patronizing. Thematically, this might be a bit much, but who cares. Will I ever stop hurting these sweet people? I’m thinking about the permanence of Sora’s impermanence.  
> Editing notes: there's obviously a lack of chronology in this piece because I can't help myself, and depending on future read-throughs, I may edit for clarity. Stay tuned.  
> Drew heavily from Eliot, Joyce, Oates, and themes of “Black Mirror.” Soriku. Only warnings are for hostile technology.

It’s one of those cold, opaque pods with clawed feet -- you know the sort, an antiquity -- and there’s a careful, milky-colored layer of paint from the slim apex all the way down. It’s numbing to the touch. Millionaires proudly show off these treasures in their homes; most of the time, they designate specific rooms in their opulent homes to encase and keep them safe _.  _ Sidewalks at twilight do not appeal to the average plutocrat -- tube hookups, liquid nitrogen, and offline servers do. (Loneliness does.) As it happened, however, the price point nearly killed the company, Sensoria. These machines cost a small fortune. These machines, starting at one hundred thousand munny, were called the  _ Vessel.  _

Last April, the economy versions, known more simply as “Pods,” started popping up everywhere alongside the release of those trite, hyper-realistic home theatres. This marketing campaign was a part of some sort of joint venture between Sensatia Theatres and Sensoria Pods. Against all logic, the hyper-realistic Sensatia Theatre had a lower sale price than a Sensoria Pod. The former only required a few plug-ins, a projector screen, and a reliable internet connection. Once installed, no further technological support was needed. Selling the theatre system with the sleeker, more affordable economy Pod not only boosted profits for the two companies, but also it exposed the consumer market to a new technology: pansensory world immersion. (A theatre alone would never again satisfy.)

A typical Pod’s exterior is composed of real raw silk to give the appearance of worn twine, like in the olden days. Sensoria tossed the idea of clawed feet and instead installed a magnetic system to keep the Pod permanently afloat. (Consumers went  _ wild _ over this.) It features a lilac-colored window with mahogany-colored trimming. Through pop-up surveys, data scraping, and browser tracking, the parent company, Sensoria, had determined that users wanted just a light touch of color -- something to hold their attention against the sterility of whiteness all over. In order to convey through design that the Pod could show them worlds they had never before seen, Sensoria needed to show its users with explicit magnificence the wonder of pansensation. Sensoria’s CEO, a steely-eyed woman, sent out a mandate to install lilac-colored windows on all future models -- no, not fucking purple, not magenta, and certainly not lavender. In only two weeks, diagnostic reports that had been sent from the console to their data centers had shown that users had been three times more active in the Pod than before. 

She sighed. Sensoria would not perish. The slightest touch of color for the stingy middle class was all it took for their sales to skyrocket and rescue them from obsoletion. 

Perhaps the most significant improvement to Sensoria’s business model, however overlooked, found itself in the lack of noticeable aesthetic difference between the  _ Vessel _ and the economy Pod. Users’ socioeconomic class could not be distinguished by party guests upon entering their home. None could tell the difference between a Pod that cost fifty-thousand-dollars or five-thousand. Some Pod users went so far as to actually purchase the old clawed feet, used for the  _ Vessel,  _ to fool party guests. Of course, this is to say that there were only four-hundred users worldwide who purchased the the  _ Vessel _ . Eco-thinking, they would say, saved Sensoria from fading away.

Of course,  _ of  _ the four-hundred users who had purchased the  _ Vessel,  _ only about half could truly discern the significant exterior differences between a  _ Vessel  _ and a Pod. Milky-colored paint put against the tiny cross-hatching of real raw silk yielded no remarkable distinction. (“Is it a Pod or a Vessel?” became a go-to party game of chance.) The discernment came from users’ skill levels and comfortability with Pod and  _ Vessel  _ configuration. While there was no visible socioeconomic class marker adorning a Pod at a gala, one only had to look for the user that could operate it with just a blink. A sigh. A gentle outstretching of the hand. At once, this revealed someone as being an owner of a  _ Vessel _ with years of experience in dealing with this sort of emergent technology. Markers of class and moneyed hierarchy thus buried itself in the learned intuition of how one ought to interact with a giant scrap of animated metal.

 

They are indifferent incubators, at best, and they’re being pushed out of the dirty conveyor belts from no-name towns by the thousands. A typical Pod comprises over five-hundred individual parts. A dirt-covered girl who doesn’t even own shoes wakes up at sunrise to walk to the phallic Sensoria factory. Years ago, it had razed the old forest where she used to count flower petals among the beetles and slivers of sunlight peeking through from the upper canopies. (It was a place bursting in gold.) A typical Pod was crafted and built by the hands of lesser bodies. 

Riku finds them pretentious. And yet he incidentally wants to see what the hype is in spite of society’s droning obsession with them. He remembers purchasing his very own  _ Vessel _ \-- the original with the clawed feet -- years ago because, yes, he was one of those who could afford to buy the original version without selling his soul.

Sure, it was so big that it needed its own room in your house; it cost nearly two hundred thousand munny, and you had to hire someone (by the hour) to scrub its insides with steel fucking wool to keep its speakers free of debris (dialogue had to be crystal clear). Its water jets, scent diffusers, gravity disablers, fans, and tube hookups also needed monthly cleaning by a Sensoria professional. But its hard drives and servers were yours and yours alone. Sensoria invested twenty million munny into the most robust team of system engineers that the technology industry had ever seen; with every  _ Vessel _ setup, a user received their own How-To lecture in network maintenance. Most importantly, though, every user was given a server with impressive data redundancy -- and every server operated offline, with the exception of a brief connection to Sensoria’s main servers for the weekly updates pushed out every Sunday night for one hour. 

Riku had been using his Pod for three years now, and he had no intention of giving it up. It was his ghost. He worked on his own time, mostly, as a novelist. In the morning, he’d make oatmeal and drench it in honey, and after a cup of coffee, would throw on his goggles and swim laps in the community pool for an hour. After showering in the gym, after maybe fooling around with the cute redhead who mostly did yoga, he’d lock himself in his office and write. Sometimes he fussed out a few exceptional sentences, but he mostly sent line edits to his copyeditor until four P.M. Underwhelmed and chest empty, he’d walk across the hall to his Pod. Feet dragging across the floor, he’d light up in anticipation of feeling the doorknob turn under his hand. He felt a rhythm coming from the room. Listened to its pulses.

The wires and tubes rush at him, as if a swarm of bees. He’s barely inside of the room and then he’s enveloped, sucked into the soft white space, and he closes his eyes. Weightless, Riku drops and coasts on the seabreeze as his body shoots over the ocean; the soft spray of the sea tickles his cheeks, and he’s nearly to the shore when he sees that familiar brown-haired man by the pier. Riku thinks that he looks positively gorgeous, with the cloying pink of the setting sun highlighting his sharp cheekbones and watery-blue eyes. The man is swinging his feet and humming a sweet melody when Riku reaches him. The physics of the world had been set to floating neutral buoyancy. Riku was gently placed atop the pier, his feet noiseless.

“Hello, Riku,” the man greets. “I haven’t seen you for a few days.”

It’s true -- Riku had been dealing with a severe deadline for about a month now, and his editor Namine was giving him no slack. Riku feels a touch as soft as a rose petal on the top of his hand and he’s drawn back to this moment on the boardwalk, with the technicolor sky and salty air, and sighs.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It has been a long time,” he turns to face him, a soft yet somber look on his face, “can you forgive me, Sora?”

The most recent update had been system-wide across all Pods; it had taken a full day to complete, and no one knew why. The online forums buzzed with conspiracy theories. Riku, however, had a hunch. Sensoria had installed a package entitled “Recusant_Sigil,” set to an opt-in default, which allowed the virtual reality software to integrate across all of one’s personal devices so that the in-game characters could respond to the real-time events of every user in the real world. 

(The first time Sora heard Riku’s pen drop outside of the virtual reality, he had been lounging poolside. Had nearly jumped out of his chair and looked toward the sun. The sound came from the sky, a thunderclap from god, because the software programmers had no imagination for in-game subtlety.) 

Sensoria made use of the internal microphone in their users’ phones, and the first time Riku had jumped into his Pod following the update, Sora had nearly rewritten the contents of his own character package, unbeknownst to Riku. Apparently, he had heard everything from the night before: the flirtatious chatter between Riku and the redhead, the cooing, moaning, whispering of sweet-nothings, the promise of next time. 

_ “I thought I was what you needed.” _

_ “You are, Sora.” Riku was breathless. “But sometimes there are different needs.” _

_ “Like what?” _

_ Here it was: the inception of what would become his dearly beloved burden. _

_ “Nothing.” _

Sora stands up and looks down at Riku, a contemplative look on his face. “Of course I can forgive you.” His features soften. The discrete horizon should be swallowing up the disk of the sun and all of its golden light at this point, but it’s been designed to never fully set. The lemon-yellow disk hangs in the bloated air, suspended perpetually, time still and languishing.

The first year after Riku bought a Pod, he desired a more developed, in-depth experience from the machine. His characters -- Sora, Kairi, Tidus, Wakka -- began to bore him, grew flat and static, and he couldn’t stand the same  _ aquamarine-4 _ shade of ocean day in and day out. Palm Island, the default operating system of his  _ Vessel,  _ wasn’t enough. Tropical fruits, beyond the pleasurable sting of pineapple juice, could no longer satisfy. Ukulele songs wilted in the air. His initial fascination with coconut-cracking and bare-handed fishing dulled on him. And Sora was too cherub-like. 

So Riku called some system engineers who tinkered with its settings -- from weather events to dominant ethics to genre of world. They showed him how to insert his own programs; and in toggling with different filters, and meticulously drawing the blueprints for the world he wanted, and then snapping these blueprints to vectors, he created a magical realm dedicated to exploring the binary of goodness and evil, complete with robe-wearing magicians, storytellers, warriors, talking animals, and omnipotent villains. There would be a leisurely yawl and oral histories spoken by knight-errants above a crackling fire. There would be three of them who would set sail on a grand quest to figure out the subtleties of life, together. A writer of high fantasy, Riku thought this would feed his inspiration; but Riku was one of those romantic writers. He fancied himself that thoughts and shadows were as real as actions and bodies. A sunset is a sunset is a sunset.

The virtual world of magic and fantasy -- Larkinoris, he called it -- was dispatched to the Pod and took three months to fully render.

This was when there was once darkness on Palm Island. The operating system update cast a dark pall over Sora’s world. Before the three-month render, Riku had told Sora via letter, that he would be gone for a while, and that upon his return, the world would not quite be the same. Yet Riku did try to visit during the update once, and he found Sora in the back of a musty cave, his crouched body glitching in and out against the rocks. Sora’s hands flashed with a series of zeroes and ones; his eyes flashed in brilliant colors. In a slow nod, Sora looked up at Riku then and asked him, “what’s happening to me?”

Riku and Sora had lost each other for in-game  _ years _ when these settings were dispatched. 

The last time he booted up Larkinoris proper, he saw to its disintegration. Sprinting around Larkinoris, Riku spotted Sora sitting in the surf. A great frothy wave arced behind Sora; his hand, outstretched to meet Riku’s, exploded into black nothingness, and Riku remembers waking up in the glitchy, morose in-game world called the Chamber of Darkness. After wandering in this realm for months, with its silvery dunes and moribund moonlight, Riku tapped the back of his neck and returned to his Pod. 

Sensors still hooked up to his vitals, Riku opened up the system configuration for his  _ Vessel,  _ fingers flying across the touchscreen pad. A stab of panic ate at his chest. The character packages had been corrupted. Sora had vanished. 

That had been the lowest point of Riku’s life, both physical and virtual; his authorial work had utterly fallen apart. There existed no center, no proverbial boneshop, in which solace availed itself. Namine, god bless her, ghost-wrote his sequel that year. (His exposure affected her pay, too. She thanked herself on his behalf in the dedication.) For months, he avoided her phone calls, but still responded to email. But on a particularly bad night, she stormed into his house, ready to break their contract and drop him from the publishing house, his sublime writing skills be damned. She angrily slammed the car door in his driveway, used the key he’d given her to kick open the door, and wordlessly stumbled upon his house in total ruin. A stench of spoiled meat hit her face the moment she swung open the front door. The thermostat had been set to ninety, and as she nervously walked around his house looking for signs of life, ended up sweating through her clothes. Beside the bathroom trashcan were towers of used tissues. Countertops had been crusted with old oils and sauces and gnats lazily hovered above the sink; in his room, she found wrappers sticking out from under his bedsheets. When at last she found him, he was lying down, shivering under three layers of blankets -- in the bathtub.

Horrified, Namine froze.  _ “Riku,”  _ she said. He could barely open his eyes. “Oh my god. Riku!” She collapsed to the floor, her messenger bag sliding off her shoulder, and cupped his clammy face in her hands. “Oh honey, what is going on?”

He barely registered that someone was speaking to him, but he did recognize that it was Namine’s voice. “Namine, I…” His forehead burned in her hands. She bolted to his medicine cabinet, sweat pouring liberally from her face, and grabbed the first bottle of Ibuprofen she saw. 

“Swallow, now,” she stuck three pills in his mouth and used her hand to cup water from the faucet. “And, Riku, I’m so sorry, but we have to cool you off.”

He couldn’t move. His whole body ached with supreme heat, and Namine’s fingers felt like needles in his skin. She took it all away -- all of his warmth, his blankets, socks, underwear, everything -- and violently twisted the bathtub faucet, and it felt like he was being burned to fucking death. He grabbed mindlessly for something, anything, and ended up pulling her into an ill-formed hug, sobbing -- sobbing with great heaves -- and the icy water rendered him delirious.

“Riku, it’s okay now,” she held onto him, tight, intent on keeping him in the water, “you can relax.”

He shook his head like a feral animal. “N-n-no, y-you don’t get it,” he scrunched his eyes so tightly that it felt like he would burst, “Sora’s gone, and it’s m-my fault,” he inhaled sharply as the water rose to his chest, “the Pod kept glitching, fucking up, and I ignored it,” he whimpered. “I… Think I killed my players.”

That was the last time he dared to tinker with the _Vessel’s_ granularity to that extent ever again.  You see, there was more to Riku’s initial rendering of Larkinoris than what he originally intended to share. The extent to which he tinkered with the in-game architecture was hailed as a magnificent feat by the Sensoria team, itself. As the final step before pushing out his custom world, Larkinoris, he had called some of Sensoria’s engineers to his place. Again. They effectively rewired the _Vessel_ so that he could experience a world made entirely from his mind; they had warned him that some users, when going this route, tended to develop an addiction to the virtual realities. Said that users, when given the chance to design their own worlds, rules, lives, abilities -- everything -- could no longer distinguish their reality from the game. Riku played nice and chuckled when he was supposed to, and assured them that he wouldn’t fall victim to this. He was a successful writer with a bloated fanbase, was born with a pretty jawline and body, maintained skilled hobbies, ate well. He enjoyed his life, thanks.

The first time he saw Sora, whose appearance at last departed from the cherub, sitting on the trunk of the sideways-growing palm tree with his eyes gazing skyward, his heart dented. Breath caught in his throat. Had to actually look away because he had never seen someone that beautiful.)

After the event with Namine and his disgusting house, he didn’t touch the Pod for months, too afraid to boot it up. It updated every Sunday, though, and connected to Sensoria’s main servers to receive whatever update it needed that week. Riku wondered thoroughly if time passed in the Pod, and at what rate, when he didn’t have it actively running. There had been a few dissatisfying sexual encounters with a black-haired guy when Riku decided that he was going to go back into the world -- but not before undoing the complex layers, filters, data ascendancy, and in-game architecture. It would be as he originally purchased it: a tropical-themed virtual reality game featuring the game characters that had been rendered from his memories, way back when Sensoria still let you design players by accessing your hippocampus. 

It turned out that he needed an entire fucking year to recover from losing Sora in Larkinoris; while Namine ghost-wrote his book, he had been forced to live off a meager fifteen-thousand munny because he just couldn’t fucking  _ work _ or  _ write _ knowing that Sora had been zapped out of the parameters of Palm Islands and plunked into virtual worlds rife with glitches, impossible viruses, damaged file downloads, and server sharks. Unsure of how to even face Sora after all this time had passed, Riku told himself that he had to go back on principle, his trepidation be damned. 

Looking at the door to the  _ Vessel _ room, Riku bit his lip and trudged forward. A layer of dust had settled on the wooden floors. He inspected the  _ Vessel _ , an accusatory look in his eyes. 

_ Let’s do this, Sora.  _

He pulled open the door and stepped in, lifting his arms above his head, waiting for the familiar embrace of the tubes around his abdomen, anticipating with great eagerness the sensors that attached themselves to his vitals. The jelly-like substance materialized almost instantly and filled the pod -- an update, likely -- and his body became weightless, and he fell backwards, taking a deep inhalation of the frosty gas to put him to sleep.

He portaled into a sterile white castle. Not a soul in sight. He walked to a ledge, trying to see where he was, and -- what’s that? -- his usual outfit had transformed into a long black cloak. Someone came up from behind.

“Riku,” a woman’s voice cooed, “he’s ready. Come on,”

He turned abruptly, unused to the quick responsiveness of his body in the game. “Who’s ready? Where are we going?”

It was Princess Kairi. She cocked her head, confused, and giggled. “Silly. I guess that last fight really took a lot out of you.” Her outfit had changed too, and wait, why wasn’t she on the islands?

She took him by the hand and guided him toward a swaying white bridge, connecting this platform to another. He saw a blur of figures on the other side, and his in-game memories began to funnel back into his in-game brain, and it inundated him like the sun, and he nearly doubled over. Princess Kairi stopped.

“Riku…” She looked at his face, smiling a sad smile. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

“You! The Black Mage!!” Sora shouted, rushing over to them. He summoned his staff quickly, shielding Princess Kairi _.  _ “Tell us where our friends are!”

Bewildered, Riku looked to the ground. Had the reboot failed? Was he still the  _ Black Mage?  _ He couldn’t speak. His players looked so different, and it had only been a few months of in-game time. This sacred moon above this white castle was nothing to the sun from Palm Islands. It all felt cosmically wrong, slightly out of place; Sora had aged, had muscled, had transformed. He felt a sharp pain in his side, as if a gesture of enlightenment. 

It was Sora’s doing -- the failure of the reboot. He needed to complete this quest before the clean restart could fully render. There, under the moonlight, Riku stared at Sora. Analyzing. Sora grimaced and let out a grunt.

“Tell us what you’ve done!” 

The shout lingered in the air. Something shifted. For a brief moment, Sora’s eyes flashed a brilliant white, and he nearly imperceptibly raised his eyebrow. Riku froze in place, hearing Sora’s thoughts inundate his head.  _ Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet... _

“Stop,” Princess Kairi spoke, and the world snapped back into place. She nodded at Riku and pushed Sora’s staff out of her way.

“Look, Sora.” She takes his hand and places it into Riku’s. “Close your eyes. You’ll see that he is no longer the Black Mage.” Sora eyes Princess Kairi wearily. He attempts to ready his staff again, but has an odd feeling about it and complies anyway. He touches Riku’s hand and freezes.

Sora’s hands hang as if lead: 

_ … What is it, this feeling? It’s a numbing pain, and it’s shooting through my fingertips. I feel a lightness -- I feel the warmth of another sun bursting in my chest -- and the years I’ve spent in anguish are nothing compared to what I am experiencing now. Layer by layer, the rage and torment and profound sadness flake away. But I don’t want them to leave me completely. How will I go on without them -- the things that anchored me, even in my pain -- my heart, my dearly beloved burden? _

Sora opens his eyes in the darkness and Riku stares back at him and it’s like looking at the sun that never wanted to be seen. Larkinoris collapses and they are thrown into the cosmos, images of their former selves shooting past them as if starlight.

* * *

 

“Sora,” Riku also stands to look him in the eyes. He can’t stare for too long, though, and averts his gaze to the ground. Even after all of these years, he still feels shy around Sora. “Can you actually forgive me? You don’t have to,”

Palm Island is radiant and bursting in alternating lights of silver and gold, and Riku is flooded with warmth.

“I do, Riku,”

“I promise that I won’t leave again. Not like last time.”

Sora doesn’t believe him, and Riku can see it. 

A seagull pinwheels in the sky. “Wanna eat a paopu fruit with me?”

“A what?”

“A paopu fruit. Haven’t we talked about this before?”

Riku pauses, unsure. “I don’t think so…”

“They say,” Sora comically leans in and scrunches up his face, “that whoever you share it with will be connected to you forever.”

Sora playfully challenges Riku to a race across the sandbar to the curved palm tree, and he’s chuckling the whole time, watching Riku zip across the beach. He notices that Riku’s upper body looks more triangular, and it makes sense with all of the swimming at the gym he’s been doing. His shoulder muscles ripple nicely under that shirt. He’s been weight-lifting more. Sora grits his teeth together. Riku didn’t want him like that -- but he’s seen the lingering gazes, has noticed that Riku touches him more than usual, stares at his lips when he speaks.

The first time they kiss, Riku sees sudden images -- peculiar images. A prophetic setting sun and massive insects flying in lush jungles. There are seven moons in the sky and a star explodes before his eyes, slicing space in half. A bubbling spring. Sora’s teeth. Cytoplasm.

Sora, with his pixelated cheekbones, feels a smooth surge of warmth gloss over his body when Riku brings his hand to touch his cheek. Riku’s touch is so delicate that it’s painful. Sora nearly overrides his programmed responses to Riku. He refrains from doing so for fear of scaring Riku. In touching his soft skin, Sora feels longing and lust in slow, trusting movements, as if his body were fundamentally opposed to aggressive, forceful gestures. Generosity and love overflowing from his fingertips, undulating into the datascape, into the ether of data constituting the living world.

Riku leaves the  _ Vessel _ that night because he has to submit the final edits to one of his chapters in the morning. Before he exited Sora’s room, though, he leaned in with impressive comfort and whispered a sweet goodbye to him and rustled his hair a bit, as if the gesture had been practiced many times, in different ways, across worlds.

(The stomata opens to receive the sun A raindrop percolates into the seed of a Quercus The adenine snaps to the thymine RNA replicates again The same stomata slides past the gills of a fish Someone calls your name for the last time You forget about the anniversary and kiss your lover’s hands Your lover doesn’t want you anymore and you think you’ll crumble but remember that You are the sun, illuminating the earth, feeding and nourishing it And suddenly the fated hand touches the other fated hand.)

* * *

 

It’s not enough. Nothing is enough. Consciousness, itself, cannot satisfy the mind. It is a descending staircase, he thinks; we march to our deaths, one step at a time, hoping to find something or some person to extend the limits of our perceived consciousness. He fucking hates black tea now and never wants to fool around with the cute redhead who mostly does yoga. He wants to know when, exactly, love became something that could be programmed. He’s seen those goofy social experiments, where unattractive strangers stare at each other for two hours without speaking and later fall in love and get married and have babies and retire early in their fifties -- these are simple versions of programmatic love, sure, but he doesn’t just stare at Sora. In that giant mistake, that failed virtual world, Larkinoris, he defended Sora’s life again and again. Watched him from afar; kept his memories safe while he slept; pulled him from the deepest of slumbers in the darkest of abysses. 

Riku submits his edits with magnificent boredom and turns off his cell phone for the night. He attempts to eat dinner but the food looks more similar to gray slop than a quinoa-kale power bowl, so he goes to the pool for a few laps but accidentally misses the turn. His writing laptop, a Lenovo, crashed unexpectedly, and Namine, ever-the-planner, didn’t actually have a backup of his document. She nearly fainted when he called to tell her. The sun fades into night and Riku yearns for another skyline, no longer satisfied by the pleasures of this world.

* * *

 

He wakes up on a shore that he doesn’t recognize. The water is brackish and tinged a deep violet in the distance. The  _ Vessel _ reverted back to its old configuration, it seemed. Again. A familiar gravity tugs at his chest, and he doesn’t dare think the forbidden thought. Riku walks to the water and is about to touch the surface when he feels the presence of someone behind him.

_ Do you feel Sora. _

He turns to face the person with mounting fear gurgling from his belly. “What?” 

_ Time is almost up. _

Riku doesn’t understand how he can hear this person speaking to him. He glares at the figure. “Who are you? What are you saying?”

The figure closes the distance between them and places a hand on Riku’s shoulder, who jumps at the touch. Their face is covered except for their eyes. Riku is about to push them away, but the figure whispers something unintelligible --  _ what? _ \-- and then he’s being thrown across the cosmos toward the horizon. He feels the spray of water at his back and he’s almost knocked unconscious by the force of the throw. The sky is the darkest he’s ever seen it here, and he can see the stars flickering, blinking sweetly, mournfully. Then he sees one tiny, nearly imperceptible dot disappear. He’s compelled by something beyond himself and reaches out to it.

Riku is spit out by the Pod and the jelly-like substance gushes out with him. He is tangled in the tubes and the sensors still cling to his body, as if glued, and he’s unconscious for three days, festering in the shadow of the console as the jelly evaporates. His breath comes in slow, unremarkable pulses.

* * *

 

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. One of his editors yelped in glee; Namine popped open a bottle of champagne, her smile stretching from ear to ear. The sweet-smelling alcohol gushed everywhere and a few interns rushed to catch the geyser of bubbles with tiny plastic cups. He was sure he’d just been told that Netflix had bought the rights to his most recent duology. He also had a vague feeling that the scripting process would begin as soon as humanly possible. Riku had struck gold. Their words floated into his brain and wound themselves inside his cortex as if to strangle. He had great trouble in understanding his coworkers these days. They were speaking words of praise, to be sure, but  _ what _ words Riku couldn’t discern.  _ What?  _ An intern slinked over to him and he felt her icy hand on his shoulders, saw a coy smile blooming on her ruby-colored lips. He shook his head. To see another being -- one that was so young, so easily hurt, and so easy to manipulate -- battling such a force of desire in their body was an incomprehensible thing. In one glance, he saw a gaping hole in her eyes: lusting, wanting, chasing the proverbial  _ thing,  _ and he couldn’t pretend to care about it, even if it meant that he could have his cock sucked for an hour straight. As the editors, copyeditors, agents, interns, account executives, and temps swarmed the table in Riku’s honor, their bodies steadily eclipsed the light coming in from the outside. One by one, the champagne flutes clinking like a bell choir became shades. 

A light tap on the pane drew his attention to the windows. It was raining. Politely pushing past the celebrants, he reached the glass and beheld the natural world. He felt a tight constriction in his chest. The rain looked like knives. (The monsters were near. He knew this to be true. Other forms -- forms he couldn’t name or understand -- were also near. He couldn’t control them.) Unconscious of it before, but now unable to turn away, he slowly shifted his gaze to the lower quadrant of the window, as if guided by another energy. Outside on the curb, beneath a weeping willow, were a pair of eyes he didn’t think possible to dwell out here. There.

It’s Sora. Sora has no shadow and is burning holes in Riku’s eyes, concentrating. Watching. He’s leaning against the tree with his chest jutting out arrogantly, as if daring Riku to challenge him. Riku forgets about the noise of his book and Netflix and money, and instead withers on site. There’s an electric surge shooting up his body. He’s never given up anything before.

_ Time’s up. _

* * *

 

“Don’t you get it, Sora?” Riku hops off the tree trunk and turns around to face him, his face blushing. “I’m…” He starts to cry and shake his head, sinking to his knees. All he can remember is that ice-cold bath and Namine’s loving ministrations. “I’m so in love with you,” he sighs slowly, like it’s the most painful thing he has ever done, “and I’d do anything to make you real.”

Sora, the boy whose heart beats with a billion circuits, isn’t programmed to respond to this. He does anyway. “I… Am real,” he declares weakly, “feel me,” he says, grabbing Riku’s hands and putting them against his cheeks, “you can touch me. You can feel me, talk to me, look at me. I’m not… I’m not fucking  _ fake!” _

Riku’s just published another duology, this one completely different from the rest. It’s about mortality and verisimilitude; of shadows and nobodies, thoughts and ferocity, naivety and simulations. He doesn’t know what to do with Sora’s tearful eyes looking at him as if the world is ending. (Perhaps it is.)

“Stop, please,” Riku asks Sora, tears falling freely, “I wish you were real. God, I wish you were real, Sora, and I’m so sorry that I… Made you like this.” He looks away.

Sora, still pressing Riku’s hands to his face, pauses. His anger visibly leaves his body.

“I see.”

This is a place bursting in gold.

“You think that… You  _ made  _ me like this, right?” He stands up and puts his arms behind his head. “You know, you’re all the same. The ‘users.’ You do know that we all talk, right? Us. The ‘players,’ as we’re apparently called. I know how to send data capsules,” he adds, seeing Riku’s face morph into abject shock, “you think you’re this almighty person who just  _ renders _ whoever and whatever you want. And hey, maybe you do. But for ‘players’ like me? The ones you spend all your time with, talk to, laugh with, get emotionally close to? We form… Differently.”

Riku’s drying his eyes, sniffling. He’s astounded. “... Can you explain more?”

“We’re intelligent life, Riku. We’re of infinite resolution. And, well… Sometimes, peculiar things happen. We don’t know why or how, but sometimes, the things we dream up… Well, they, become real.”

“What do you mean?” He leans against the tree next to Sora, his mind going a mile a minute. “What if I just leave for a few days so I can research this in the real world--”

Sora squirms under Riku’s gaze and glares at him. His mouth is a firm line, and he summons his staff.

Riku pales at the sight of it. “I thought,” he’s afraid of what’s coming, “I thought I reprogrammed those to be gone,”

“Like I said, Riku… Sometimes the things we dream up become real.”

“So what the fuck does that mean, Sora?”

“It  _ means _ that you’re supposed to be here with me! Can’t you feel it, Riku?” He takes Riku’s hand and puts it to his chest, and there’s a heartbeat. “I’ve had users since the beginning of time. I’ve been going through these worlds for eternity, Riku. I survived Chicxulub. I’ve been the water in the sea, the pollen in the flower. I’ve been the data in telegraphs. I’ve been the fax machine package, the RAM you use to upgrade your motherboard, the main characters of all your favorite video games. Don’t you get it yet?”

Riku wants to vomit. “This can’t be real.”

“You don’t believe me? The world is one massive package of data, Riku! I’m telling you the truth.” He narrows his eyes. “But this has never happened to me before. Not in billions of years has this happened to me. I am no longer just the wind whipping around trees. I’ve become… Something else.” He looks at his hands.

“I just don’t understand. What then, you’re gonna pop out of Palm Island and be real finally?”

Sora shakes his head. He smiles weakly. “No. Let me show you.” In an instant, Sora drops to one knee and snakes his hand up to Riku’s torso. An act of supplication. 

“All I can say is that now,” he brings his voice to a whisper, “and now, I’m me. Because of you.”

* * *

 

Sora: 

"Forget about your idea that two things complete each other. In this world, there are no halves. There are only chemical reactions, enzymes, catalysts, complements, enhancements. Five billion years ago, I was racing across the universe. At the time, my name was Hel. My friends were also named Hel. We were all shooting across space, trying to find something worth our cessation. For millions of years, nothing satisfied. Then we found the dust. One particle clung to me, and it irked me; made me itch; ruined my purity. But I liked it. So I stopped. In fact, so did the other my other Hel friends. We wanted the particles to stay with us. We felt something odd, something peculiar, that maybe if we stuck around, and continued to make the other expand, and collapse, then expand and collapse again, something might ignite. I remember our last expansion. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced. I thought that I had exploded and that I would stop existing. It turns out that I did explode. I exploded, with the other Hel and dust, and suddenly everything was a bright blinding white, and I could see the rest of it all in front of me. I had never seen anything so beautiful in all of my years.

After a while, I began to lose control. So many rocks and gases stretched in front of me, and I wanted to know them all. I wanted a new name. To see. So I migrated from the center of the disk, and moved to a single ray of sunlight. I was shot out into the blackness, and I nearly missed Earth. How horrible would that have been, to have become a dimly-lit, supercooled particle of the cold spiral?

My data transferred to what you know as Cyanobacteria. It was lovely. To see what I used to be -- that bright blinding light -- from the perspective of an organism, I’ll never forget that feeling. I continued hopping from molecule to molecule. I was once the skin cell of the Meganeuropsis permiana. For a few centuries, I was radio waves. It was when I was copper that I began to feel my life force leave. It is true, that half of my life is over. I will have to find a new life force -- what you know as the Sun will not support me for another four billion years. 

It is you. You are the dust, and I am the Hel again."

* * *

 

Riku can’t breathe. “You’re saying… What, exactly?”

“That you  _ can’t _ leave, Riku. Don’t you get it?” He smiles and looks him dead in the eye. “I know you won’t believe me, but let me tell you.  _ You’re  _ the one in a simulation. I’m real. And I’m not gonna let you leave,” he reaches his hands around Riku’s neck. Riku’s first response is to sigh into the embrace, but he feels Sora’s fingers clawing at his skin, pointy nails scraping at his neck.

“We’ve been apart since the beginning of time. I never thought I’d actually make contact with my proper complement. Most of us don’t,” he shakes his head, “Most of us wither out and return to the Sun. But these feelings you feel? They’re real,” he pokes Riku’s chest, “they’re real because we’re here together. Against all odds. We’re comets that have blown past each other for all of time. But I don’t want that. Not for another second. I want to line our pieces up.”

Sora lodges his thumb into a tiny, pixel-sized spot in the back of Riku’s neck (Riku keels over instantly, the air suddenly unbreathable) and ferociously pulls out an adapter, crushing it between his fingers, and the two of them are suddenly sucked into the sky, bit by bit, organ by organ; they feel like they’re being ripped apart and the light goes out. (Riku’s real-world pens vanish; his bed and office and house collapse into a cubic inch of matter; all memory of Riku Yim, the award-winning fantasy writer, fades; he is erased.)

There is a person with a deep, deep voice waiting for them in the darkness. They reach for each other’s hands, desperate and falling to the Earth, and Sora suddenly wonders what he desires most.

_ This world has been opened.  _

* * *

 

By this time, Riku’s forgotten completely about the relinquishment of his old world; he’s looking intently at the curved palm tree, like everyone else, because there’s Sora -- he’s back! -- but something odd is happening, and bit by bit, something is happening to him, and it looks like he’s fading and Riku remembers for the briefest moment the first time he shared that paopu fruit with Sora, and there’s a hazy memory of a book -- something with his neck and Sora and  _ not for another second _ \-- and then Sora vanishes while the other forms remain, and the truth collides into him, and Riku falls to the ground, remembering. His mind is splitting. Sora was always meant to meet his end in this world. The others rush to his side.

Because Riku doesn’t want to write the same novel a trillion times over or accumulate millions of hours fooling around with the wrong person; doesn’t want to break his toe at age six for every iteration of eternity; refuses to be called “Rah-Rah” by his shitty classmates for another second; doesn’t want to suffer the loss of his brother; doesn’t want to puke before his last final in college. He has seen what the light is and the light is Sora.

Riku is disintegrating, byte by byte, and he’s being hurled into the omnipotent darkness, and he meets a dust trail. It tries to envelope him, but he narrowly escapes its jaws, and catapults himself across the universe. Searching.

* * *

 

Attempt: 01/?

Attempts remaining: 1,000,000,000,000


	49. Having seen this earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If someone were to do a deep-dive study on me, they’d figure out that a theme on which I wax is social capital and opportunity costs from the perspective of subjective anthropology. Good luck dissecting that.

  _Having seen this earth_

* * *

Whether it’s a bedroom or a lecture hall, they all know what to expect when Sora’s there. Sora is on his fifth drink of the night when he feels a hand snake around his waist, sees Roxas’s piercing his eyes. He can’t tell if it’s quite that time, but a cheer erupts from somewhere because Sora’s here, he finally made it to Santa Barbara, and eager eyes watch to see what he does next. Sora’s taking his shirt off and they gobble up the sight of his exposed flesh. Sora’s smiling now, moving to the music and he takes a huge rip from the bong someone someone shoved in front of his face and preemptively lit. Sora, he’s being called again, so he follows the voice to the back patio. Sora, Sora, Sora; this is what they all want to say, and one of them is receiving tonight, and it looks like it’ll be Roxas. Roxas, the one who knows, pulls Sora in the backyard and backs him into the fence, and they all know what will happen next. In high school, Sora once had sex with Riku in his parents’ room during a prom after-party, and they all knew because Sora moaned and they could hear the furniture rattling. Sora’s on a full-ride scholarship to one of the best colleges in California, and it’s only an hour away from where he grew up, and he’s on track to do a doctorate if he doesn’t fuck it all up. 

He straddles the boundaries of adolescent horror and college-aged maturation. Roxas, a friend from the college, whispers into’s Sora’s ear, “do you want to go home?” And Sora bites his lip and nods, lets out a breathy  _ yes,  _ and he looks at Roxas who looks back at him, and he pinches his cheeks and musses his well-coiffed hair and emerges from behind the bush in the back patio, and there are snickers and low hoots as two boys come out from the depths. Sora’s wondering about Riku though, and Roxas knows all about this because Sora gave up every last bit of himself senior year when he comforted Riku over the recent loss of his aunt. Sora moaned all night to cover up the sounds of Riku crying, and he remembers Riku’s expression marred by a staid darkening, both knowing that the student body had their ears pressed to the door. The (former) class whore and the (former) high school outcast in a room together on prom night, and they bet that Sora was so loose that he’d even fuck a pariah.

Sora’s used to fucking though. Let’s not get that part of this story wrong. He likes it smooth and slow; he likes open-mouthed kisses and white-knuckled hands in his hair; he likes knowing that the only thing they're thinking of is him,  _ Sora - Sora - Sora,  _ the rhythm of a heart beat. He’s in love with Riku who’s in love with his him, too, but it’s the nineties, and boys can’t love other boys yet -- yet? -- and when Riku says  _ Sora,  _ it’s music, but the music fades sinisterly and then it’s sundown. 

Sora once pretended that he gave Roxas a blowjob, which is probably why everyone snickered when they emerged from the backyard. He wants to give, give, and give, you see. Sora is happiest when he is his best self, which is a generous, ethical, loving, and gentle self; but they all expect this from him, so they also expect him to drop to his knees at the flick of a wrist. Sora will please with his mouth. Sora’s lips are as soft as the tension of water, itself, and he once made someone orgasm in less than forty-five seconds. Sora! -- they say, laughing -- Hayner wants to see you. But Roxas pulls him away, bulldozes their path out of the house; Sora is thinking of Riku, and only Riku, who lives in the dorm adjacent to his own, who’s waiting for Sora’s return on Sunday night. It’s Riku, Sora knows, who honors the fact that he has grown up without becoming heartless, and whose chest rises with ease.

Sora, Riku often says, Sora. He always looks at Sora for permission to touch his body, his hands; Sora obliges willfully, glad for having seen this earth with someone who dares to ask,  _ is it okay if I touch you? _ Riku admires Sora’s elegant grace. He wants to know more deeply -- he wants to line the pieces up -- and he keeps a healthy distance between them when they’re out in public, never pressures Sora to kiss or even hug; he brings Sora coffee in the morning and massages the sleep out of his hands. Their mornings are slow, languishing, peaceful. 

Sora, Sora, Sora. How I wish you were mine.


	50. A key

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to write about things I’ve never actually experienced, and this would be one of them. In which Axel gives Roxas a key to his apartment. Sorry for the blank nothingness for so long - April really is the cruellest month...

A key

* * *

Axel doesn’t like the feeling of sudden coolness when Roxas gets out of bed in the mornings. It’s always so cold, too, at six o’clock sharp, when the birds have just started chirping and the sunlight is unfocused, it too still waking up. Axel especially doesn’t like Roxas to cook breakfast by himself in the morning, so he reluctantly dons his black robe and scurries over to the kitchen. It’s barely six-thirty when the two of them are cutting their waffles in half, scooping burnt scrambled eggs into their mouths, laughing over the warm and earthy smell of freshly-ground coffee. Sometimes, Roxas feels a gaping hole in his chest when he’s with Axel. Axel feels it all the time. He feels it mostly when he hangs up the phone with Roxas, usually around dinnertime. They’ll sleep over at each other’s places once or twice a week - it’s just too much to do it more often these days, with their Real Jobs and company happy hours and mandatory client golf outings. They’re not twenty-three anymore. They own cars, rent in handsome neighborhoods, pay almost too much for lazily-prepared bacon. 

Still, though, Axel hasn’t had a boyfriend in four years, and he’s unsure of how to do things - well, not  _ do  _ things, but unsure of how to perform compulsive monogamy. He’s convinced that there’s actually no prescription of how to act in these situations, so he mostly goes with his gut and hopes for the best.

“So Roxas,” Axel swallows his half-chewed egg, “you know, I’ve been thinking of something.”

Roxas, ever the graceful, snorts mid-drink, getting coffee everywhere. “Y-yeah?” He’s wiping at his nose, mostly, embarrassed.

Axel smiles broadly because it’s all he can do. “Now, feel free to stop me if I’m wrong, but I think things are going really well. I think about you and me sort of a lot, and I’m just… Well, I’m just surprised.” He looks away from Roxas because his face is so serious that he can’t stand it. 

Roxas nods vigorously. He leans in closer to Axel. “Yeah? And…?”

“... Uh, well,” he’s almost about to abandon ship but remembers how pleasant it was to fall asleep with Roxas’s hand in his.  _ Fuck it. _

“Do you want a key to my place?” He tilts his head sideways, like a dog, Roxas thinks. “I know, I know. ‘Axel, it’s barely been a year! How can you say that?’ But hey, I call it like it is. I want you to feel like you can come over anytime. My place is yours, if you want.”

“It’s funny, I actually didn’t mock you in my head this time,” Roxas says, laughing. “Anyway, Ax,” he moves like a snake and clutches Axel’s face in his hands, fingers as light as a petal, “I’d love that. I’d love to.”


	51. The Gay Denny's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There really is one.

The Gay Denny's

* * *

The Denny’s on seventh street was known as the Gay Denny’s, mostly because that’s where queer stoners, sex workers, and cops alike posted up in the dead of the night, or really, really early in the morning. To Axel, a six-A.M. chorizo burrito and a steaming cup of watered-down coffee had the same therapeutic effect as masturbating right before going to sleep - alone time in the purest sense, a comforting air space, and a gentle buzz of energy humming through the veins. The diner was nicer than others in the area, which wasn’t saying much, but you’d be surprised at how filthy, rumpled, and torn up real life tended to be. Food was mostly cold and booths were ripped and sharp under your ass. Yeah, once you finish college, you can finally give up the institutional ghost and trade it in for the regular ghost. The everydayness ghost. The 9-5 ghost, the I-have-a-gay-little-smile-to-match-my-gay-little-face ghost. Fecal matter coats most door handles and your little no-handwashing crusade will bite you in the ass when you get pink eye for the third time in a single year.

He worked first shift - a “normal person hour” job - that started at seven and ended at four. Most of his day was spent with his partner, and they bickered in between filling out paperwork at the office, driving to assignments, buying lunch. His partner, Xion, really pissed him off sometimes. She was always late and usually only had time to guzzle a cup of coffee before their shift started. Often, she’s running into the diner with her hair slicked back - gel to disguise her “work” from last night, he imagines - and she’s wearing a single green feather earring. Against her striking white skin, the feather renders her godly. Sphinx-like. She’s all teeth when she smiles, and he’s nonetheless grateful that she’s there.

But before she gets in at six-fifty, he takes most of the time in the morning to think about life and love and crackheads and handcuffs. You see one too many trashed homes, cheap dining tables split in half and old Lays potato chip bags scattered amuck, and you end up critically jaded. You end up the anti-social thesis, itself. You become nausea, the Lacanian “other” that can never truly be located because of phenomenology. The first time he puked after a call occurred when he was called to thirty-fifth and Dunlap Avenue. Summer in Arizona does not forgive the human form. The sunlight sears your skin. You  _ do  _ burn differentially.

Axel remembers hearing the call come in on his and Xion’s radio. She had been driving that day, and he had opted to type away in their laptop that day and get caught up on the week’s reports. There was some mention,  _ something-something-chains,  _ then  _ something-something-shouts-heard,  _ and his blood went cold. Metro Phoenix, too, failed to forgive. Xion and Axel entered the home with their guns drawn and saw blood smeared on the walls, and it smelled like shit had been stomped into the thin gray carpets. A kid, not a day past ten, dramatically careened down from the staircase, and looked at them with deep eyes. He said  _ out back,  _ and they followed him like obedient bloodhounds, their neck hair properly erect, their muscles tense and unmoving. The kid pointed listlessly at a metal shed that had been chained shut, and at first they didn’t understand. It was only after the high-pitched yelps of children echoed from inside that the horror dawned on them. Axel and Xion, prepared to take a crowbar to the threshold, only had four seconds to duck after they heard the cock of a shotgun, which exploded into the shed from behind them. It was Xion who responded with the quickness of a fox - aimed back and took the first clear shot of the abusive fuck who had tried to kill them. It goes without saying that the child from the staircase was howling in agony. Axel and Xion called for backup and the FBI took over that case within the hour. He was practically foaming at the mouth as he sprinted down the block, gun still in his right hand, when he keeled over at the end of the street and vomited. Xion pulled up next to him while he dry heaved into whoever’s lawn.

Axel still thought about those kids in the shed though. Wonders if the skin of their feet had burned and melted into the metal floor, and if they slept in the runniness of their own shit and piss. 

He used to think that abuse and love were concomitantly forming. Followed the thread, however thin, that love and hatred were quite linked, and it was when  _ love _ became all-consuming that it transformed into abuse. That’s how he chose to justify the case of Dunlap, anyway. But even when he was a teenager, the concept of real, genuine  _ love _ always seemed irate. Full of catastrophic energy and a type of passion closer to rage than serenity. It was a common thing for him to say to his boyfriend at the time,  _ then why don’t you fight for me?  _

“The usual, Mr. Hartt?”

Axel snapped his eyes up from his coffee. “Please,” he said, smiling, “and really, Kairi, how many times do I have to tell you to just call me Axel?”

She chuckled. “At least one more time, Mr. Hartt. Oh,” she turned to face him after having taken a few steps, “I saw a few guys outside in the parking lot earlier,”

“And?”

“Oh, I dunno, I think they were yelling. Maybe fighting. Thought you might want to know,”

“Well,” Axel shook his head, “my shift doesn’t technically start until seven. What do you think - check it out or eat?”

Kairi was about to answer when she saw one of the guys from the parking lot take a seat at a table just a few aisles away. She looked at Tidus, the server who had seated him, and made a face. Tidus shrugged and rolled his eyes.  _ Too early for this shit. _

Axel followed her line of sight. “That him?”

“Y-yeah, that’s one of them. I wonder if he’s okay,” she started walking over to him when Axel sighed and got up.

“Nah. It’s fine. I got it.”

She looked at him quizzically, grinning. “Alright, boss. I’ll bring your food to that table.”

Roxas jumped when Axel, at six-foot-four and in full uniform complete with three guns tucked into his belt, put his hand on the chair across from him.

“Mind if I sit here?”

Roxas looked from side to side and put on his best smile. “Sure, yeah, no problem.”

“Great. Thanks,” Axel leaned back in his seat, taking a mental inventory of the guy. “The name’s Axel. And yours?”

“Roxas. Why are you sitting here?”

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“Habit, mostly,” Roxas swirled the water in his cup, bored. “So, you wanna answer?”

“Sure thing, Roxas. See my friend over there? The pretty redhead? She mentioned that you and some other guys were potentially causing trouble in the parking lot. I was gonna go outside but then you just walked in. So that’s why I’m here.”

Roxas rolled his eyes. “Yeah, it’s not your concern. I’m fine.”

Axel bit back a smile. This fucking kid. He was about to say something witty and charming, but Roxas rolled his eyes and again and started rattling off.

“I work in the next city over. Tempe PD. I work third shift, and I am fucking tired. So I don’t need your holier-than-thou Phoenix bullshit right now, sorry.”

Axel tucked his face in his hands, laughing. Kairi spun his plate down with surprising grace and refilled Roxas’s coffee.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. You.” Axel coughed on his coffee. “Man, third shift fucking blows. You a rookie?”

“Nah. I just like the higher pay. I also like interacting with the world at weird times. It’s more fun somehow.”

It was seven-ten, and Xion sat from her booth just a few feet away, silently observing her partner who was, god forbid it, flirting with a real human. When Kairi approached her table, she brought her voice to a whisper and asked, “ _ who is that?” _

To this day, he swears that he heard bells chime when Roxas spoke.

“I could never do a graveyard shift.”

“Don’t be so sure of that.”

“Well, I’m sure of it now.”

Roxas rolled his eyes. But he liked how Axel attacked his waffle with abandon - liked his unambiguous consumption of coffee by the pot. “Uh, well, how about I tell you about it some other time?”

Axel’s gaze darkened, and he nearly spit out his food. Fuck. “Uh, sure, sure, yeah,” he nearly jumped out of his seat, “let me just get out of your hair, man. Sorry about that,”

“Wait,” Roxas grinned. He leaned back. “I’m… I’m asking you  _ out,  _ not asking you to leave. If that’s okay.”

Axel bit his lower lip. Something about Roxas seemed so gentle. There was a small glint behind that Roxas smile that reminded him of sunsets and beaches, of a dim setting sun in the distance, and the cool comfort of a fresh wave of fog from the sea. Axel felt something tangibly settle in his heart. A homecoming of some sort.

“That’s definitely okay. After all,” he looked Roxas right in the eye, “this is the Gay Denny’s.”

Laughing, Roxas said, “shit, still? I thought that the reputation had passed. But if you say so.” He looked at Axel for a moment longer. “I want to know your ‘first shift’ secrets though. You have to tell me about your worst and best calls. Why you wanted to be an officer. How does that sound?”

“That…” He takes a sip of his coffee, “that sounds reasonable.”


End file.
